 With authentic scenes and details based upon an actual program on the idyllic University of Washington campus, this film sensitively and high-mindedly depicts a gifted adolescent whose intellectual peers happen to be chronological elders. 14-year-old Harry, a university junior and aspiring astronomer, has his heart set on an upcoming field trip to view a rare solar eclipse. Because he would miss his sister s wedding, his parents oppose his attending. Needing money to go on his own, he answers a want-ad from Molly, a freshman volleyball star, for a tutor in calculus; and their relationship becomes tenderly romantic. Her boyfriend Duncan, stroke on the rowing team, also befriends Harry and makes him his boat s coxswain. Harry and Duncan commiserate together through the painful ambivalence of helping the girl they love improve her math grades in order to transfer to far-off UCLA, leaving them both.