University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Perhaps the academic opportunity I’ve valued most at Phillips Academy has been Astronomy, especially spending evenings this past fall in the Science Center’s Observatory and using the Schmidt-Cassegrain reflector telescope. Observing the cosmos as the Observatory’s dome rotated 360 degrees made me realize how much bigger the universe actually is and that my point of view in everyday life on Earth is infinitesimal compared with what’s happening across the galaxy. I reveled in witnessing the Crab Nebula in its infancy stage emitting vivid colors, and I’ve been amazed that stars that are so far…