Astronaut, Not Astronomer

High school was a very long time ago.

I had the nerd reputation. That part never really bothered me. What I find more interesting now is hearing what other people remember thinking about during those years. This is just a small glimpse into what was bouncing around my head during my years at Altus High School.

One summer, somewhere between sophomore and senior year, I was at a math and science camp at SWOSU in Weatherford, Oklahoma. Around that time, I was quietly drawn into conversations about the Superconducting Super Collider, under construction in Texas. There were scholarships, pipelines, and timelines. The idea was wild and straightforward: finish a bachelor’s degree, and the rest would be taken care of.

I remember a thick stack of brochures, very early 90s. Radial colliders. Linear colliders. CERN felt too far away. Stanford wasn’t even on my radar yet. There was a lab in Tennessee, tucked into a forest, that I assumed would be where I’d intern. It all felt oddly practical.

At the same time, I was starting to realize physics itself might be too much for me. Not uninteresting, just not quite how my brain wanted to live. I loved the ideas, but I already knew I needed to touch the thing, not just prove it.

Then the Superconducting Super Collider was canceled.

By then, I probably wasn’t going to be a physicist anyway, but that decision closed a door for good. One possible future quietly disappeared—a parallel universe, as Star Trek would say.

I’ve always respected people who can prove existence without ever encountering it. I know I’d never be fully satisfied that way. I’ve come to realize I’m an astronaut, not an astronomer.

Looking back, I didn’t leave physics. The tools just changed.

That’s a small snapshot of what I was thinking about back then. I’m always curious what other people were carrying around in their heads during high school.