I learned the wives tale that if you are good at algebra you'll be bad at geometry or good at geometry and bad at algebra (and a couple more higher stuff pairs in there too with each of those, trig and calculus but. . .) and I happened to be good at algebra and bad at geometry We had a national algebra test and I scored in the 99th percentile and the teacher just looked at my lazy, C+ self, moved me to the back with all the A students and told me to do whatever I wanted (i.e., listen or goof off, use the class like study hall, whatever, like I'd been doing? :-) Just don't ask me to do a geometry proof; had to retake that class in summer school.

The "Math is Fun" site might help? http://www.mathsisfun.com/algebra/polynomials.html