Did I waste my time reviewing Arithmetic and Basic Algebra? I wanted to understand the point of the basic concepts and their connections to other concepts in mathematics instead of just doing mindless symbol manipulation (which I experienced a little bit of in calculus) so I spent some time reviewing these concepts and seeing if I could explain them in a nuanced, intuitive, and logical way but I feel like I may have wasted my time not pursuing more complex topics. Do I still have a chance at doing something great? I'm 19 by the way.

By arithmetic I mean sums, continued fractions, prime numbers, and stuff, and by algebra I mean the elementary concepts not related to vectors, fields, and groups, and shit which I still have no idea about. I feel like my poorfag education fucked me.