After Leaving a Neglectful Home, I Got My GED—and Now I’m Looking for a Way into Astronomy
The first time I called the community college, I hung up before anyone answered. I was twenty-one, living in a rented room above a garage, and I had just finished my GED at the adult learning center across town. It had taken me nine months. The test itself took two days, and I remember sitting in the parking lot afterward, just watching people go in and out of the grocery store across the street, feeling like I had done something that should have felt bigger.
But I needed to figure out what came next. And the only thing that felt real to me was the sky.
I’d been looking up at the stars since I was a kid. Back then, it was the only quiet place. My home was loud in the wrong ways—no one asked where I was, no one noticed if I ate, and the chaos had its own rhythm. But the streetlight behind our house washed out most of the sky, so I’d walk a few blocks to a little park where the horizon opened up. Lying on the grass, I’d find Orion or the Big Dipper, and it was enough just to know they were still there. That I could count on them.
Leaving was less dramatic than people expect. I just did it one morning. Took a backpack and a duffel, rolled my sleeping bag, and walked to a friend’s house. We all spent the next two years helping each other stay afloat. I worked at a fast-food place, then a warehouse, then a hardware store. I kept thinking about the sky, but I didn’t know where to start. So I looked it up at the public library.
That’s where the real question began. I had a GED and an interest in astronomy, but no idea whether that interest could become something like a job. The internet said most astronomy careers require at least a bachelor’s degree, usually a PhD. That felt like a mountain I had no gear for. But then I found something encouraging: there are jobs in planetariums, observatories, and science museums that don’t require a doctorate. Some ask for experience and public speaking skills. Some just want someone who can run a telescope and talk to people without being boring.
I needed guidance, though. Real guidance.
So I went back to the adult learning center and asked the staff there if they knew anyone at the college who could talk to me about science classes. The woman behind the desk—her name is Denise—didn’t just hand me a flyer. She walked me to the college’s STEM advising office and introduced me to a person named Marcus. That introduction changed things.
Marcus was patient in a way I didn’t expect. He didn’t ask why I’d waited so long. He just asked what I liked about the subject. I said, “I like that the sky works.” He nodded. Then he told me about something I’d never heard of: a local astronomy club that met at a community center. He said one of his students was a member, and they had extra telescopes to lend out. He wrote down the meeting time on an index card.
I almost didn’t go. But I did. And that’s where I met a retired physics teacher named Linda, the kind of person who talks about star clusters like she’s describing old friends. I told her I had my GED and wanted to work in astronomy but wasn’t sure how. She said, “Start with math.” It wasn’t the answer I wanted, but it was an answer.
She was right. I tested into remedial algebra at the community college. That felt humbling. But Linda reminded me that nobody skips the math. Even professional astronomers spend a lot of time wrestling with equations. She said the difference between a hobbyist and a student is just the willingness to sit with what you don’t know.
So I signed up for two classes: algebra and intro to astronomy. The astronomy class was taught by a guy named Dr. Osei, who had a way of making the solar system feel close. He also made a point of telling the class about his own path—he’d been a first-generation college student, worked at a car wash for two years before transferring to a university. He said he didn’t get into research until he was twenty-six. That helped me breathe a little.
What I’ve learned in the last few months is that there are more on-ramps than people assume. One of the biggest godsends was finding out about the federal student aid form. I had always thought I couldn’t afford college, so I avoided thinking about it. But Denise walked me through the application for financial aid. I almost cried when the aid letter came back. It didn’t cover everything, but it covered enough for part-time enrollment. That was a door.
Another thing that helped: free resources. Dr. Osei pointed us to an open textbook for astronomy, and I found lecture videos online from a university that were publicly available. For math, I used a free tutoring program at the college—a few hours a week, in a room with a whiteboard and some older students who were just patient enough to explain negative exponents until I stopped glaring at them.
If there’s anything I’d say to a parent or teacher reading this, it’s not about grand gestures. It’s the small things that matter. The worker who takes ten minutes to look up a program. The teacher who writes down the name of an organization. The classmate who says, “You can sit with us” during a group project. There was a moment when Dr. Osei stayed after class to show me how to use the college’s observatory telescope—a squat, white tube on a manual mount. He let me fumble with the focus knobs while he patiently waited. That twenty minutes meant more than any career lecture I’ve ever watched online.
I’m still at the start of this. This semester I’m taking precalculus and a general chemistry course. I haven’t decided whether I want planetarium education or a degree in astrophysics. I don’t know if I’m good enough at math to keep going. But I do know that at least once a week, I drive to a dark spot outside town, set up a folding chair, and look up. The constellations are still there. It’s a small thing, but it keeps me moving.
I don’t know if this will turn into a career. I’ve made peace with that. So much of this process is just showing up, asking questions, and not disappearing when things get hard. For now, that’s enough.
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