What about math do you not understand?

I am a journalism major. I don't do math.

I have sucked it up for the past 15 years of school just trying to get by. I'm a very good student normally, but when math crosses my path, it's ugly.

Interestingly enough I was hired to tutor a 7th grade girl in the loathed subject not long ago. Being in such a position gave me the opportunity to look at the problems I've had and try to understand just what would not make it through my number-dreading brain.

Here are some reasons I've come up with for why I am a math idiot:

1. I'm really impatient - I like to try to get math homework done as soon as possible... which may mean a problem may not get at much attention as it deserves. In having a roommate last year who was a math major, I realized that one math problem can take hours to solve. And I just don't feel like dedicating that kind of effort to something like that. A mathematical topic can be multi-faceted, but to me it seems more simple than it really is and I treat it as such.
2. I don't like to check my work - Once I get through a problem I don't really feel like going through it again. Period.
3. I don't like using pencils - You have to keep sharpening them and the graphite smears. Which means I probably will use a pen and if I make a mistake I grow indifferent.
4. I'm very conservative when it comes to taking notes - For some reason I have this thing about reducing notes as much as possible. I come out with fewer pages than everyone else, which makes me feel better for saving trees but renders it more difficult to complete homework, I guess. :\
5. I have the wrong attitude - Not thinking you can do it really screws you over. Really.
6. I don't know how to make it fun - English is fun. Science is fun. Math... I don't know. I haven't cracked that code yet. I don't even know if it can be fun for everyone. Math for me is only fun once I've figured out how it works and how to do it. Usually it's fun for the first few problems of a set, and then near the end they throw in the tricky ones and I get screwed up again.

It's really rewarding figuring out how to solve any problem of a type, but extremely discouraging for me if I can't. Maybe if a teacher could go through all the parts of the type of problem... it seems like oftentimes I would go home to work on a set of problems, get through the first few and have no idea how to complete the rest, like we never even went over it in class.

I got the girl I tutored through the semester by going over every problem and not hesitating to answer a question, unless I thought she could do it herself. If someone says they can't, they probably can't. I hated it every time my professor would ask me to do something and I honestly couldn't for the life of me... that's why I was asking.

Basically math should be simple. A lot of times people are only taking math because they have to. Those that aren't probably know what they're doing anyway. So save those that don't by taking the complication out of it and telling them only what they really need to know.