[RESOLVED] Can't seem to retrieve a specified character from a string of numbers

[DinosaurusRex]

I'm relatively new to VB, and I'm coding a graphing calculator to familiarize myself with it. I haven't figured out how to to the x^n function yet though.

I made a function to retrieve a certain number from a text box, where the first character is "^", and the second/second and third are numbers.

An example of this not working is: 2^2 = 1.12589990684262E+15 (Where tbNum1 is "2" and tbOpr is "^2"

Here is my code for the entire function:

'tbopr IS WHERE THE SPECIFIED POWER GOES (x^n)
'tbNum1 IS THE FIRST NUMBER, WHICH IS RAISED TO THE POWER "p"
'tbCalcOut IS THE TEXT BOX THE ANSWER IS OUTPUTTED TO, AND THE NUMBER THAT IS RAISED TO _
'THE POWER "p" IF IT ISN'T EQUAL TO 0.

    Private Function Power()
        Dim p As Integer = 1
        If Len(tbOpr.Text) = 2 Then
            p = Convert.ToInt16(GetChar(tbOpr.Text, 2))
        ElseIf Len(tbOpr.Text) = 3 Then
            p = Convert.ToInt16(GetChar(tbOpr.Text, 2) & GetChar(tbOpr.Text, 3))
        Else
            MsgBox("Power is too high.", , "Error")
        End If
        If tbCalcOut.Text <> "" And tbCalcOut.Text <> "0" Then
            tbNum1.Text = tbCalcOut.Text
            tbCalcOut.Text = tbNum1.Text ^ p
        ElseIf tbCalcOut.Text = "0" Or tbCalcOut.Text = "" And tbNum1.Text <> "" And _
            tbNum1.Text <> "0" Then
            tbCalcOut.Text = tbNum1.Text ^ p
        End If
    End Function

Thanks guys, this really has stumped me.