Personal Narrative: Astronomy For Me

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Astronomy for me is like a drug. An addiction that after you start, will never be cured, or in my case, never become futile. This addiction was caused by something seemingly silly: a telescope. When some people get addicted to games on their phone or to buying cars, their phone or car become the most important physical item they own. Since I would consider my addiction astronomy, my telescope is my vehicle of addiction and also the most important item I have ever bought. In my family, if you wanted something expensive and it wasn't necessary, you had to buy it yourself. That's exactly what I did in the summer of 2016. That summer I had my first paying job as a counselor at the summer camp that I had attended as a younger child. The first experience of having a relatively large sum of money for most of my friends ended up how I imagine most teens spend their money; they either buy a car, a new phone, or put it in a savings account (possibly the …show more content…

It's hard to describe how someone can be hooked on astronomy and compare it to drugs of all things but I was definitely hooked. Since I lived in a city, light pollution was always a problem for me. I sought out places that astronomers would consider crown-jewels for observations, but the shortcomings of Rhode Island offered little in the terms of extremely dark skies. I knew I needed more, so I planned trips to the closest locations that can offer skies for an astronomer to die for. However, these trips were not as joyous as I hoped. I took two trips to upstate New York with the primary goal of observing things I couldn't see at home. Both times I was plagued by the astronomer's curse: the few nights that you really want to do some telescope observing, it will be cloudy. Despite the setback of two long car rides and two seemingly longer, disappointing car rides, the experience has not altered my fascination with

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