Orbit

Lexile: 1220 | Grade: 10

Passage

Liora had always felt like she was drifting. Not lost—but not grounded either. While her classmates moved toward careers, passions, or goals, she circled ideas without ever landing. She told herself she was being thoughtful, but part of her wondered if she was just afraid to commit.

One afternoon, she stayed after physics class to ask her teacher about a term she didn’t fully understand: *gravitational assist*. 'It’s when a spacecraft uses the gravity of a planet to change its speed or direction,' her teacher explained. 'Instead of fighting gravity, it uses it. It slingshots forward by leaning into the pull.'

The words echoed in her for days. Not just the science—but the idea behind it. Could uncertainty itself be a kind of gravity? Could questions, doubts, and even failures help her change direction—not by resisting, but by listening to what they were pulling her toward?

That week, she wrote down every thought that tugged at her—not polished dreams, but small, steady pulls: the joy of helping someone understand, the calm she felt while organizing problems on paper, the curiosity she couldn’t quiet when someone talked about systems, patterns, or design.

Slowly, Liora started making choices—not big leaps, but shifts. She volunteered as a peer tutor. She joined a robotics team. She signed up for a summer program in applied engineering. These weren’t answers, but they were motion. The more she leaned in, the more momentum she found.

Liora didn’t suddenly discover her destiny. But she no longer felt like she was drifting. She had learned what gravity couldn’t teach her in formulas: sometimes, you don’t escape orbit by pulling away. Sometimes, you change your path by listening to what draws you in—and using it to move forward.