The AP Calculus march is a march that happens annually and is held by the math department here at HSE. The AP Calculus march happens every year before the students in Calculus takes their AP test. This tradition has been running for over twenty years, and was originally created by Mr. Drozd (the current math department head) during his second year of teaching.

This event happens the morning before the test and is a fun way to celebrate the work that was put in over the year. They have band members play their instruments and waving flags, all of AP calculus marches around the school in a army march style. This parade wasn’t always like this though, many classes used to have team t-shirts and do a breakfast, or play review games together.

The parade started as a friendly rivalry between Calculus AB and BC, Mr. Drozd stated, “We made sure the walk by Mrs. McCallister’s room while they had their breakfast just to show off, we were cooler.” They originally just paraded around inside the school but eventually the tradition got so big they had to move it outside and parade outside.

This parade has had a larger impact than just having fun before an AP test. It allows students to get in the right mindset for the test and helps them reach their full potential and do their best. One student said “To summarize the cadences put him in the right frame of mind to be confident and attack the test.  Paraphrasing, if you can walk around the school shouting and demonstrating how much you love math and make no excuses of who you are inside, it is incredibly therapeutic.”

All in all this event has grown throughout the years to a grand tradition that AP Calculus student look forward to at the end of the year. It has become something that students want to do and is a major reason why people do AP calculus, According to Mr. Drozd this is a bucket list item for many royals with him saying, “I think there are several “bucket list” items to graduate as a royal, participating in or seeing the march feels like one of them.”