This leads to frustration. With frustration, despair follows in short order. And so the thoughts begin:
"Why do I need to learn this?"
"When would I ever use Algebra in real life?"
What you have to remember, though, is that basic math is riddled with special rules and symbols as well. For example, the symbols "+" and "=" were at one time foreign to us all. In addition the concept of adding fractions, as a single example, is filled with special rules that we must learn. When adding 1/3 to 1/3, for example, you keep the common denominator and add the numerators, so that 1/3 + 1/3 = 2/3. The point here is that when you begin to learn algebra it may seem overwhelming with the rules that you must learn, but this is no different from the multitude of rules that you had to learn that dealt with basic math such as addition and subtraction.