I think it all began one cold winter night back in my elementary school days. Although at the time, being a little too young (and cold) to fully grasp what was happening, all I could feel beginning was a case of pneumonia. But I clearly remember the image of my dad, still hogging the telescope, with me on the steps wondering if we were ever going to go inside. Well, he finally let me use the telescope, although I'm sure I would have rather had a cup of hot chocolate and a warm blanket. I lowered my head down to the eyepiece of our old Dobsonian, and zooming in from light years away, into our back yard and down that ancient red tube, came the image of a beautiful blue-white star. I had to know the name of this jewel that I was gazing upon, so I asked my dad. To make a long story short, that ended my observing for the night, as my dad commandeered the telescope in an effort to satisfy my question. I don't recall as to whether or not we ever found the name of that beauty, but that's beside the point. Trudging back inside, I took one last glance towards the heavens, and I knew what I wanted to do when I grew up. "I wanna look at stars."

Well, I'm seventeen now, but I sometimes wish I were that little kid again. I know how corny that sounds, but since that cold winter night years ago I've come to learn a few things. One of those things, I'm proud to say, is what astronomy means to me. Astronomy is what that little kid felt on a cold winter night; the thirst for knowledge. It's not about funds, or organizations, and especially not politics. It's the kid in all of us, wanting to know the name of that star, or that constellation; and later on, how it all happens, and why. Alexander Pope said it all in the quote above: "He, who through vast immensity can pierce…May tell why Heaven has made us as we are." Through astronomy we can be that little kid, who grows into the man who knows what, and why, he is.

Sitting here in my baggy jeans with a Snapple at my side, I find comfort in the fact that I know what I want to do with my life. I want to be an astronomer. I want to be taught, and subsequently teach others, our place in this humbling universe.

Now I'm in my last year of high school and suffering from a full-fledged bout of senioritis, but content with my direction in life. I know, and have known since that winter night years ago, what I want to do: I still wanna look at stars.