[GlenTheMachine]

True story: when I was fifteen, I went on a school field trip to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and picked up a copy of BMW in the museum bookstore. I was determined that I was going to make it out of my podunk little town and become an aerospace engineer, so I decided to work through the book on my own.

The problem was that I had never had calculus, much less differential equations. I fact I didn't know what calculus was; I only knew it as a word that meant "really hard math". So I made it about five pages in and realized that I had no chance. BMW stayed on my bookshelf.

Ten years later, I was in a graduate program for aerospace engineering and had finally made it through all the pre-recs for 600-level astrodynamics. BMW was one of the textbooks for the course. The moment, a month into that class, when I opened the book and it actually made sense was one of the highlights of my life, and that copy of the book I bought as a teenager is one of my most prized possessions.

[fiprofessor]

Great story. Reminds me of the book and movie October Sky, in which the protagonists, who are high school students, strive to learn calculus so that they can learn how to better build rockets.

[chernevik]

Congratulations on sticking with it despite the early hurdle.