but how else do kids get to calculus?

Some of us never do. Trig was the highest that was around in my high school in the late '70s. I chickened out on anything more than Algebra 2, even though a couple of teachers tried to tell me that I could do this. It just never synched properly.

I got into the AP track by the skin of my teeth, my dad's efforts at teaching me when I had a crap teacher and my mother insisting on them allowing me to get out of the basic track , which ended in trig. All of us who had the crap teacher weren't initially allowed to get on the AP Calc track. Which was kinda unfair, getting tracked out of middle school because they had a history teacher teaching algebra I. A bunch of us made it fine. Hell, I passed the BC (?) Calc AP exam with a 4, I think. May have been a high 3, not sure.

I ended up a math minor. Which is kinda funny, considering while I could do the practical, I kinda was a fail at connecting with the theory, and the math department, well...it is theory! There is a reason I got a degree in physics.

What's sad is I barely remember any of it.

I had algebra 1 as a top track student in my excellent public school in 7th grade (1984), and then again in 8th grade (in a different school; there were no higher options and actually it was good for me to do it again, I finally really got it), and I made it through AP Calc (AB). I worked my ass off in Calc - it didn't come easily. And I don't remember a blessed thing about it.

I was a Math major, technically, and I remember shit-all about it. But really I was a Comp Sci major--they just loaded it with math and called it Math and Comp Sci.

I was in a math/science magnet jr high and then went to a snooty private school after my 8t grade SAT scores didn't qualify me for the magnet high school.

And then in college all the freshman level math classes I would have wanted to take were at 8 in the morning. Turned me right off college level math.

I liked AP Calc. It made real sense to me.

I just want to go back and shake my lazy, lump-like self. I would have been a good engineer.

My oldest sister took Physics in high school and complained about how hard it was, and she studied her butt off. I figured I couldn't be as smart as she was, so I wrote off ever taking Physics. If I had . . .

It's never too late. My mother graduated college about a year and a half ago. It took ten years, but she did it.

BC (?) Calc AP exam

AP Calculus

I only had one year of calculus, so I only qualified for AP Calc. AB. The kids in my school prepping for AP Calc. BC were in the same classes as those prepping for A-levels.

I took AP Calc. AB, Chem., US History, and English Lit. I enjoyed the classes, and the exams. I am dismayed at how little I remember of any of it now.