modular arithmetic - RSA encryption theory - modulo theory

I'm a bit mathematically challenged and have been working on the RSA cipher (good start). I can find the public and private keys and know how to work do modulo operations on a calculator. The problem is that I can't do them when the numbers get to high. For example say I have:

$$10^{541} \bmod{2923} = C$$
The numbers involved here become very large and don't display fully on a calculator, if it can even handle the numbers (mine is crap). What I am wondering is if there is a better method to work out the ciphertext or plaintext that will work for largish numbers.

N.B. I'm not a mathematician, I'm in computing but was told my question would be better posed here.