I had that same problem in high school. There was no way around it really at my school, it was a public college prep school and Senior year math options were AP Calc or Honors Calc. Trig/Analytical Geometry (is that pre-calc?) in 11th grade (and Geometry in 9th grade) about kicked my butt. My solution for 12th grade was to transfer to a liberal arts college 500 miles away. They understood that, as an English major, I had not use for Calculus at all and allowed me to take some fluff math course where we talked about Lewis Carroll. Had I stayed in High School, there's no doubt in my mind that I would have flunked calculus.
