Shooting For the Stars by Ashley

Shooting For the Stars by Ashley - June 2017 Scholarship Essay

Not unlike many other children, my childhood ideas of my future career fluctuated frequently. First, I wanted to be a doctor, inspired by my kind and caring pediatrician. I loved her for her sweet personality as well as her prescriptions of bubblegum-flavored cough syrup and the sugar-free lollipops that were left in a basket on the receptionist’s desk, to be given to well-behaved children on the way out of the doctor’s office. As soon as I realized that doctors, too, became sick, and that consuming candy and sweet medicines was not included in a doctor’s job description, I dumped the idea. Since then, I proclaimed my desire to become a veterinarian, a scuba diver, a psychic mind reader, and many more, each of my decisions changing within a week.
My constant indecision came to a screeching halt when I was six years old. At the time, I was in first grade, and my teacher was giving away old books from our class bookshelf. One of these books was titled "Barbie: Shooting For the Stars". I only chose the book for the blue and pink color scheme on its front cover, but as I read on, I was inspired by the protagonists’ bravery and quick thinking, and so blossomed my aspiration to become an astronaut.
I became obsessed with all things space--I begged my parents for a telescope, decorated the kitchen cabinets with handmade pictures of the planets in our solar system, and devoured article after article about celestial bodies.
By middle school, I had discovered the risk of being lost in space and the fact that most space exploration missions lasted months. As a result, my desire to be the first woman to land on Mars dissipated, and I turned to astrophysics as a future career, so that I could study and explore the final frontier without leaving the comfort of earth.
Throughout my twelve year education, a career as an astrophysicist or an astronomer has been my ultimate dream. However, I tried to suppress this dream in high school as my family members and friends also gave up their childhood aspirations in favor of more realistic and financially satisfying careers. As a result, I felt immense pressure to dash my hopes of working for NASA, and I felt compelled to return to pursuing my first dream--to work in the medical field. I lacked the courage to tell my peers about my actual dream job. I feared their criticism; I told myself that a career in astrophysics was unrealistic for a person of average intelligence like myself, and that others would simply tell me the same.
Despite my discouragement, my love of the world beyond our planet persisted. I had since sold my telescope, but I still attended special solar viewing events at my high school and took AP Physics 1 in my senior year of high school. Initially I refused to disclose my reasons for taking the course, but I eventually found individuals like me who tried to settle for a more traditional career path but could not ignore the tantalizing idea of studying the parts of the universe had not yet been explored. This comradery taught me that happiness and fulfillment in a career are worth more than comfort and stability. In addition, I learned that average people--not only geniuses and wealthy individuals--could follow their dreams, too.
Consequently, my attempts to condition myself into pursuing an easy, predictable career have proven futile as I continue to study physics and improve my mathematics skills in the hopes that I will eventually use them at NASA. My current declared major at the University of California, Los Angeles is Biological Sciences, but as I have grown over the past year, I plan to use my freedom as an underclassman to explore classes rooted in science and mathematics, whether or not that entails a change in my major, and I hope to eventually work at NASA as I dreamed when I was six years old.