Yeah, for me the real click was in AP Physics where we derived an equation for some motion property rather than just being handed the formula as I had been in, say, 8th grade science. The meta lesson is that you can use math to get more information out of a model than you think you have, which, yeah, keeps you from becoming a 5G get the facts style individual.

I loved learning about jerk, snap, crackle, and pop as higher-order derivatives of position wrt time in physics.