How I got my GED after leaving home, and what helped me start working toward astronomy
The first time I looked up GED requirements, I sat in the vitamin aisle of a 24-hour pharmacy, using the store’s Wi-Fi on a phone with a cracked screen. My shift at the register had ended at ten, and I had nowhere else to be. An employee asked if I needed help. I said I was looking for calcium. She walked off. I went back to the bright website that explained what documents I needed and how much the test cost.
I had left my mother’s trailer six months before, right after turning eighteen. “Left” sounds firmer than it was. I just stopped coming home. I slept on a friend’s sofa, then another friend’s floor, then in a budget motel for a week. The trailer wasn’t physically dangerous. It was neglectful. My mother worked nights and slept days. I cooked my own food, signed my own permission slips, and stopped going to school because no one noticed the difference. Truancy calls went to a disconnected number. By the end of junior year, I had missed forty-two days. The school didn’t mention it until I failed the final exam.
Looking back, I think the adults around me didn’t know what to do with a quiet kid who didn’t have a parent at conferences. No one was unkind. They just didn’t ask questions. I learned that if I stayed quiet, I disappeared. That’s not dramatic. It’s just how school felt from the inside.
The practice test was free. The real test was $120, which I saved over eight weeks of folding protein bars and unloading boxes. I passed in March. It felt like a clean sheet of paper—not a celebration. I had no transcripts, no counselor, no plans. I was legally an adult with a GED and no idea what adults did next.
I posted in a few forums under a throwaway username: “ISO advice for astronomy related career.” I had loved the night sky since I was small. My mother didn’t care what I did outside, so I spent many nights on the porch with a torn sticker chart, finding Orion and Cassiopeia. Space was one of the few things that felt mine—it didn’t require a parent or a permission slip. The replies were mostly kind, but they assumed I had support. One person said “Get a physics degree.” Another said astronomy was competitive and I’d need a PhD. I closed the laptop and didn’t open it for a month.
What changed was a retired science teacher named Mrs. Orton. She set up a small telescope by the library’s magazine rack every Tuesday. I walked past twice before she said, “You keep looking but not stopping. What do you see from outside?” I told her I used to know constellations. She asked what part of astronomy I liked. I said galaxies. She nodded and said, “Okay. Let’s find something closer than a telescope.”
She didn’t tell me to go back to high school or start a physics degree. She gave me a short list, and I still have it in a note on my phone. First, finish the free algebra course on Khan Academy. She said math is the language of astronomy. “You don’t have to love it. You have to understand it well enough to translate.” Second, sit in on an astronomy survey class at the community college. She pointed out that I could register as a non-degree student for about thirty dollars. Third, go to one county stargazers club meeting. She knew the treasurer—a mechanic with a homemade observatory in his yard. “He’s annoying, but he can show you more about telescopes than a website can.”
Then she said something I think more parents and teachers need to hear: “Don’t ask a kid what they want to be. Ask what part of science they like doing with their hands. Then find the nearest free version of that.”
I followed the list. Algebra was hard—I had forgotten most fractions. The survey class was crowded, but I saw Jupiter through a department telescope and heard a professor say that most stars in the Milky Way are smaller than the sun. The stargazers club met in a church parking lot. The mechanic’s homemade observatory had a 14-inch scope, and I saw Saturn’s rings as an actual ring, not a photo. That night I made a plan I could afford: finish two years at community college, transfer to a university with a physics program if my grades worked. I found out later that I qualified for a fee waiver because I was over 18, under 22, and had unstable housing. Nobody mentioned it. I found it in the financial aid binder after reading every page.
Other small doorways helped. The public library had a telescope that you could check out like a book. A librarian in the science aisle showed me Zooniverse, where volunteers classify galaxies for research projects. I spent ten minutes a night clicking and sorting images. It wasn’t a job or a degree, but it made me feel like I was doing something in the field instead of waiting for an invitation.
I think the single most useful thing anyone did was set a date. Mrs. Orton didn’t say “keep me posted.” She said “finish algebra by June, and I’ll quiz you on Saturday.” I needed a deadline because I had no other structure. That is not a professional teaching strategy. It is a human one. As a parent or teacher of a student like me, you can be that structure. Not by saying “you’re so resilient”—that felt hollow. By showing up at the library on a Tuesday, or sending a one-line text: “Did you do the math module yet?”
There are a lot of young people like me. They’re the ones using store Wi-Fi to look up GED requirements. They aren’t waiting for a hero. They’re waiting for an adult who says, “I’ll be here next week, and we’ll look at your progress.” That simple sentence can carry someone through a lot of empty months.
I still don’t know if I’ll ever work in astronomy. I’m taking a statistics class now and using the library’s study room on Fridays. My office hours are a folding table by the reference desk. But I have a note on my phone and a book about star formation that’s four days overdue. The next step after this is small: finish the chapter, email the club’s outreach coordinator, fill out the FAFSA before the deadline. That feels like enough for now.
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