A Chat with a Space Scientist by Mia

A Chat with a Space Scientist by Mia - March 2018 Scholarship Essay

"So you're in second grade?" I asked him as we walked down the hallway. "That's really cool. I loved second grade, it was probably my favorite grade. Right now I'm in twelfth grade."

"Twelfth grade? Wow! That's nine more plus my grade!" He exclaimed, happy to apply math to any situation.

"Not quite. Ten more than your grade," I corrected.

"Oh. But twelfth grade is a long way away. What comes after twelfth grade?" He questioned.

"Well, no actual grade comes after twelfth, but most people go to college after they graduate high school," I told him, eager to share where I was going to go to college.

"College!" He exclaimed, eyes widening at the word. "What's so great about college? I thought I just had to get through high school."

I shook my head at him and told him to lower his voice. We were in a hallway, after all. "Yes, college. It's sort of like high school, but a lot bigger and more diverse."

"Diverse?" He raised an eyebrow at me.

"Diverse means to have a lot of different people and that are all different from one another," I clarified.

"Oh. But what's so great about college and the diverse?" He asked. I giggled at his bad grammar.

"Well, college is good because it helps you learn about what you want to do in life, like what you want to do as a job. You can take classes that help you learn about the subject you are interested in. You take these classes so you can earn a degree. You major in a subject, which really means you become an ultimate master at that subject," I told him. He stopped so he could tie his shoe.

"Woah, cool!" He said, looking up at me from his shoe. "So could I be an ultimate master at being an astronaut?" He asked. He sounded excited.

I laughed. "Well, yeah sort of. You would get a degree that would help you become an astronaut. So like, you could major in aerospace engineering or applied physics, which are really just fancy words for space scientist."

He finished tying his shoe and we continued walking. "No way! That's so cool. What are you going to go to college for?" He looked up at me and grinned. "Do you want to be an astronaut too?"

"Yeah," I said, smiling back down at him. "I want to be an astronaut too."

We finished the rest of our walk down the hallway, laughing and pretending to be astronauts the whole way.