I just finished junior year and Im on summer break. Next school year I will be a senior. I plan on taking AP Calc BC and AP Physics Mechanics/EM next year. Should I be doing anything this summer to prep for those two significantly challenging courses? Last year, I took physics honors and passed with an easy A. I also took pre calc honors with a high b/ low a. Pre Calc was challenging for me but I still passed. Ive never taken AB calc either but most kids in my school go straight to BC without taking AB. Ive been watching khan academy videos about physics honors to prep (newtons laws, centripetal acceleration, etc…). Is there anything more I should do? Or should I not worry about it?
Do problems
Like what?
When I was in high school, I was in the same situation as you. I took AP Physics C (which is what I’m assuming you’re referring to by AP Physics Mechanics/EM) and AP Calculus BC my senior year, and my only preparation was pre-calculus and algebra-based physics. The hardest thing for me was that AP Physics C was calculus-based and we had to do differentials in physics before we learned how to do a differential in calculus. Our physics teacher tried to teach us all of calculus in a class period, and it did not go well. But we also had a really bad physics teacher, so that might have been the real issue. What we ended up doing was asking our calculus teacher for help during lunch. It turns out our physics teacher would sometimes go in to ask our calculus teacher for math help, as well, so we were in good company apparently. So what I would say is learn some of the basics of what a differential is and how to take one. I’m sure there are a lot of resources online for this. But that was really just based on my experience, so that might not even be good advice for how the courses are taught at your school.
But in the end, it was fine really. It never even crossed my mind to prep the summer before the classes started, and I did fine in both courses. Don’t worry too much about it. Just don’t be afraid to ask for help if there’s something you don’t understand. The key is to get help early, if you need it.
Thanks for the advice 
my schools has an amazing AP Physics teacher and an amazing Calc BC teacher
Look up past AP FRQ’s and multiple choice so that you have an idea of what is coming your way. Khan Academy was great for me in Calc AB, but Physics wise, nah. Physics helps with Calculus during the year, but at my school Calculus was always behind Physics, and never really felt like a challenge. To put it in different terms, Calc was like a course on reading and Physics was more like a course on analysis using the reading skills learned in Calc.
For Physics C, focus on what you didn’t quite understand or haven’t gone over yet in your honors course and look up videos that might help you at least somewhat get the concepts down before the year starts so that you have an advantage going in. Giving yourself a good introduction can be incredibly helpful. You don’t have to necessarily worry about it, but if you keep studying over the summer it will make the courses so much easier over the year. My mistake was stopping my prep in the summer for what was coming and having it bite me in the butt with a 4 in Mechanics this year. In Physics B (which I took junior year) we’d never gone over rotational kinematics, and I waited until too late to try to understand what was going on and ultimately crashed and burned (or felt like it) when I got to those questions in the Free Response and Multiple Choice section of the exam. If you look at the course requirements for Physics C on the CB website and then compare it with what you’ve learned in your honors course, you can easily google up things like “Gauss’s Law” or “Rotational Kinetic Energy” or whatever you haven’t gone over yet and just watch videos that help you understand what’s going on even if you won’t necessarily know the math in it until the fall or spring.
what if i understood everything from physics honors? like i said, phys honors was an easy a for me.