This might be long!

I’m a college student intending on graduating premed. One of my school’s course requirements for premed is calculus. I took stat instead of calc in high school, so I took the earliest level calc class, only to find that the calc class still assumes that high school calc was taken. That, combined with my not-gelling with the professor’s teaching style makes it so that I am completely out of my depth. I tried to teach myself the concepts but I failed miserably. Problem is, I didn’t realize this until I was confronted with the first exam, worth 25% of my grade, where I didn’t know anything about at least half of the questions.

Since it’s a premed requirement and I have to do well in the class, I’m thinking of dropping the class (my schools drop deadline has not passed) so it doesn’t appear on my transcript and retaking it next semester, after getting a tutor or taking online classes to establish some kind of base knowledge. Whether or not I take the class has no effect on my tuition - we’re just billed on whether or not we’re full time (which I still will be). My advisor approves this plan.

How do I tell my parents? They’re used to my getting straight-As all the time, and, because I was so sure my self teaching was working, I assured them everything was going great in the class.