Dude, you are way ahead of me!
I took the regents in 1975, by the time my daughter took honors bio at Bayonne HS 5 years ago, I could barely understand the first lesson! I only had a clue because I took bio in college too.
We complain about the state of the schools, but I must say that in science and math the cirriculumn today is much advanced over what I took.
And I always was terrible in math, so you can keep the astronomy, for my kid it was an "easy A", to me it is something I must take on faith. That is to say, I have faith that most astronomers are good people and aren't just making stuff up. I cannot judge it for myself. And no, I can't spell either. But my mother blamed the nuns for that.
:-) First off, don't blame the nuns. Bad spelling is often a form of dyslexia. Two of my kids grew up thinking of spelling as one of the creative arts!
I can't "do" astronomy either; like you I take it on faith that astronomers haven't made planets in test tubes yet. And math and I parted ways in calculus.
As far as being "ahead" of you, I am...but not in the way you think. I took the Biology Regent's way back in 1952. At that time it was "known" that human beings had 48 chromosomes!