Lilly

The semester starts not so much with a bang but with a sense of having always been. I barely remember the
beginning. It all feels like the middle. I go to class, I do my homework. I feel more in control. I am student and
teaching assistant and the ghost who haunts the laboratory. A professor from the physics department sees me
walking down the hall on the first day of classes. He mock bows. “Your table awaits, my lady,” he jokes. I am more
at home here than in my tiny dormitory room.

The signs of change are minute, but they exist. Different arrangements of tables in the cafeteria. New calendars to
hang on my wall, solar and lunar in crisp white and green. An info session on honors thesis defenses booming out of
a lecture hall, more faces in my new classes than I’ll ever be able to put a name to, deadlines looming for summer
research and internship applications—the feeling in the air that things are happening all around me—almost
tangible—like a scent.

I’ve done something wrong. I am full of doubt. My friends toss concepts back and forth as they contemplate their
semester projects for their observational astronomy class. They are eager to bounce their ideas off of me, equally as
experienced if only for the time being. A rational outside observer. I’ll feed them my thoughts and retreat back to my
basement laboratories where I and the rest of the physics majors nest, separated from the astronomy kids by four
flights of stairs and a bottomless chasm of clashing interests. But I cannot declare myself one or the other. I don’t fit
with any of them, too flighty for the physicists, too down-to-earth for the astronomers. Stuck on some paradoxical
helical staircase that leads me round and round and never up nor down. I’ve grown distant with many of the
astronomy students I used to call friends. But I cannot afford–no, I refuse to let any lasting grudge or low-level
hostility stop me from pursuing what I’ve always loved. And now I hear about their project proposals and telescope
operations training and cross-country observatory visits and I begin to think.

My advisor says, “You know, you could take this class when it’s offered again your senior year, but we might not
have all this beautiful data to work with when—”

“Stop, stop!” I pretend to cover my ears.

He laughs. He says, “Sleep on it.”

The next morning he says, “Your proposal is due Friday.”

“I can do that.” Of course I can. I’m giddy and flushed with power and fear all at the same time. I take situations like
these seriously, I really do, but I often make final decisions based on little more than gut instinct and an
unquenchable desire to exercise my own agency. The add/drop slip in my hand is a shining example. But I cannot
afford–no, I refuse to regret this choice.

And I do not. I don’t have time to, anyway. I write the proposal and my advisor hands it back devoid of the red ink
of his disagreements. I bumble my way into two independent projects. I hold office hours for three different classes.
Several students ask me if I’m a senior, or if I’m doing honors for my capstone. “No,” I laugh awkwardly, “I’m a
sophomore, actually.”

“What!” they all exclaim. It’s the exact same tone every time.

“But you already know all of this stuff!” one girl says with a sweeping gesture at the homework papers and
textbooks on the table in front of them.

“After this semester, you will too,” I tell them.

That night I go up to the observatory for my first small-group run. We’re given full control, with no professor or TA there
to troubleshoot if things go wrong. We have a few scares—the camera won’t turn on! the dome won’t stop
spinning!—but in the end, things settle, and the clouds are clearing away, and eventually the guy who’s lead observer
for the night says, “I’m gonna run this script.”

He runs it. The program ticks through its list of commands. Find the object. Point to it. Rotate the dome to look out
through the slit. Done? Done. Take a dark image, with the camera shutter closed. Looks good. Open the shutter.
30-second exposure, maybe. It’s open, it’s closed, it’s downloading, I’m holding my breath—

It’s beautiful. The bright fingers of the Orion Nebula reach out across the sky in perfect black and white.

It takes us a few seconds to become aware that we all shouted, indistinguishably, but in unison. And we laugh it off,
and let the session continue. But there’s something magical about that moment that still lingers, even while we’re
shutting the telescope down for the night. A sense not just of achievement, but of having glimpsed something
wonderful. Now it’s well past midnight and I’m wide awake, adrenaline still seeping through my veins like some
slow-acting vitamin. Or poison. Sleep evades me. Worth it. My skin is dry from the cold air but my eyes are still full
of stars. ♦