Leaving Home, Getting My GED, and Figuring Out a Future in Astronomy
The first time I tried to call the community college’s astronomy department, I hung up after two rings. I was sitting at a public library computer with my GED certificate saved on a flash drive, eleven months after I’d walked out of my mother’s house with a duffel bag and a handful of cash. The phone number was on the screen, but the thought of saying the words “I’m interested in astronomy” to an actual person felt ridiculous. I was twenty. I’d barely passed algebra. The last time I looked through a telescope was at a sixth-grade science fair, and the guy running that table had a beard and a lot of confidence.
I still called the next day. The person who answered wasn’t a professor. It was a receptionist who put me on hold and then transferred me to a voicemail box that was full. That should have been the end of it, but I was already used to filling out forms and waiting for nothing. Leaving home at seventeen meant learning to handle bureaucracy as a survival skill. I knew how to apply for a free lunch in high school. I knew how to get a copy of my birth certificate. I knew how to look busy when I had nowhere to go after school. So leaving a message that no one returned didn’t feel personal. It was just another step in the long, slow process of trying to get anything done.
The GED itself came after months of sitting in an adult education center two bus rides from the apartment I shared with a friend’s mom. The place smelled like burnt coffee and floor cleaner. The teacher, Ms. Tran, gave me the same quiet nod every morning. She never asked why I was there at my age. She just handed me a packet and said, “Finish page eleven before you leave.” I failed math twice before I passed. The first time, I was angry. The second time, I was just tired. The third time, I stopped letting myself think about all the years I’d missed and just did the problems in front of me.
After I passed, everyone kept saying “congratulations” and asking what was next. I said “college, maybe” because that sounded normal. But I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know anyone who had gone. And every time I looked at a college website, I hit the word “associate’s degree” and felt my stomach turn. Degrees cost money. Degrees had prerequisites. I had a GED, a part-time job pouring drinks at a coffee shop, and a phone full of screenshots of pictures of Saturn’s rings.
Astronomy wasn’t a whim. It was the one thing I remembered loving before things fell apart. When I was a kid, I used to stand in the back yard and look at the sky because nobody inside the house was looking at me. The stars were predictable. I could count on them being there. I didn’t know any constellations, but I didn’t need to. It was enough to know that the light I was seeing had traveled for years to reach me. That made me feel less stuck.
So after the voicemail box, I took a different route. I searched for “astronomy club near me” and found a group that met at a city park every third Friday. I showed up. It was cold, and there were six people with telescopes, and everyone was older than me. A man named Dave let me look through his scope at a cluster of craters on the moon. He asked what I knew about astronomy. I said, “Nothing, but I want to learn.” He didn’t laugh. He pulled out a notebook and wrote down the names of five YouTube channels and two free online courses. He also gave me a tip: “If you want to work in astronomy, you don’t have to be the scientist. You can be the person who runs the telescope, or the person who teaches kids about the telescope, or the person who fixes the software that points the telescope.”
That piece of advice shifted something. I had been imagining only one path—astronomer with a PhD—and I knew that wasn’t realistic for me. But there were other doors. Observatory technician. Planetarium staff. Science outreach coordinator. Some of those jobs still required degrees, but not all of them. And even the ones that did started with one course, not an entire career.
I enrolled in a free online class about planetary systems through a university website. It wasn’t for credit, but it gave me a structure. I watched lectures on my phone during breaks at work. I took notes in a composition notebook that I kept in my apron pocket. I learned what an AU was. I learned why Venus is so hot. I started to understand that astronomy wasn’t just pointing a telescope at a pretty object—it was math and physics and patience. That was okay. I could be patient.
The community college finally called back, three weeks after my first message. It turned out there was an introductory astronomy class that hadn’t filled up. The woman on the phone told me I could audit it as a non-degree student. I would have to pay a small fee, but I could sit in without officially enrolling. I went every Tuesday night that spring. I sat in the back row. The professor, Dr. Callihan, was young and over-caffeinated. She raced through slides about light spectra and stellar temperatures. I didn’t understand half of it, but I started staying after class to ask one question. Not a deep question. Just, “Can you explain that again?” She never made me feel stupid. One night, she said, “You have a GED, right? Bring your certificate to the registrar and apply for financial aid. There’s a form for nontraditional students. It’s not as hard as it looks.” Then she showed me the exact website, the exact office, and the exact phrase to say at the front desk: “I’m here to see someone about the adult learner admission process.” That phrase was the key. It made me sound like I belonged there.
I think parents and teachers underestimate how much small, specific guidance matters. When I was in high school, adults used to ask me “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and I’d shrug. The question was too big. I needed someone to ask, “What do you want to try this month?” or “What’s one class you’re willing to sit in on?” But nobody did. They saw a kid with a neglectful home life and decided the best thing was to give me space. That was the opposite of what I needed.
If you know a young person in a situation like mine, don’t wait for them to ask for help. Ask them a smaller version of the question. Offer to help with paperwork. Let them use your printer to fill out the admission form. Drive them to the public library after hours if that’s where the free internet is. Tell them the exact title of the person they need to email. These things sound tiny, but they’re the difference between a hopeful thought and a scheduled appointment.
I still don’t know what I’m doing. I’m taking a math class this summer because Dr. Callihan said astronomy always comes back to math. I’ve also started watching live streams of telescope tours from a national observatory, and I emailed a local planetarium asking if they needed weekend volunteers. The volunteer coordinator said yes. So now, every Saturday, I stand near the ticket counter and show people where the restrooms are and explain the difference between a star and a planet when they ask. It’s not much. But I’ve learned that the path I was so desperate to find wasn’t a single road. It was a series of small, unglamorous steps: a voicemail that got returned, a notebook with notes, a seat in a room full of people who weren’t sure I belonged there but let me stay anyway.
Leaving a neglectful home doesn’t end when you walk out the door. It continues every time you allow yourself to be seen doing something new. I’m still not used to that. But I’m getting better at it, one Tuesday night at a time. I don’t know if I’ll ever call myself an astronomer. That word still feels too big. But I’ve learned to say, “I’m studying astronomy,” which is true. And that’s enough for now.
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