Charity Woodrum

And so I was just sitting there staring at that image.

Each of those galaxies has billions of stars, and each of those stars we think has at least one planet.

And I don't know, it kind of gave me the feeling that I got as a kid laying under the night sky.

And it also just kind of calmed me.

I wasn't thinking about that human suffering that I was seeing on a daily basis.

I was actually nine months pregnant when I walked into an academic counselor at the University of Oregon and said, hey, I'm a registered nurse, but I want to go back to school for physics.

Wow.

He looked at me like I was crazy a little bit.

But around the time when I was pregnant with my son, I was thinking about, you know, what type of person I wanted to be for him because I wanted him to pursue his biggest dreams.

And I felt the only way to do that was to pursue mine.

And how was that going to work?

What was Jason doing?

He had a soil company business.

He would literally sell dirt to people.

He loved soil.

That was his big passion because he loved, you know, reading about all the bacteria in the soil and how it was alive and all of that.

And so we always made the joke that whenever he was looking down, I was looking up.

So at first, you know, I have a new baby now and I'm starting my first term.

And so I wanted it to be a little bit easier and only be gone away from Woody for, you know, an hour or two a day.

I didn't want to be away from him for too long.