Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Viewing Earth from Space with Ellen Ochoa

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

To round out the week on Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, Sharon talks with Dr. Ellen Ochoa, the first Hispanic woman who went to space. Ellen flew in space on four different occasions, and after her career as an active astronaut, she became the director of the Johnson Space Center. Listen in to Ellen’s story, and why, in her retirement from NASA, she continues to encourage women, Hispanics, and other underrepresented groups to pursue leadership and STEAM roles.Thank you to our guest, Dr. Ellen Ochoa. Hosted by: Sharon McMahon Guest: Dr. Ellen Ochoa Executive Producer: Heather Jackson Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Researcher: Valerie Hoback Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month. Every month at Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at Fizz.ca. Hello, friends. Welcome. I have a treat for you today.

I'm chatting with veteran astronaut Ellen Ochoa. She is the first Latino woman in space. She has flown in space four times. She has over a thousand hours in orbit. And she is the former director of the Johnson Space Center. She's actually just a delight. You are going to love listening to this episode. You should listen to this episode with your kids if you have them. I think you are going to love hearing her story. Space is inherently interesting.

And I've often joked that if it were up to me to explore space, well, we're just going to have to keep wondering what's up there. But I absolutely loved hearing from her and I cannot wait to dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. I am very excited to be chatting with Ellen Ochoa today, who is an astronaut, or who was an astronaut. I assume you're not actively in space each and every day. astronaut or who was an astronaut. I assume you're not actively in space each and every day. That's correct.

But you have been to space four times. You've been in orbit for like a thousand hours. That's incredible. Well, thank you. It was an amazing opportunity. All of my flights, these were on the space shuttle, of course, were nine, 10 or 11 days. And at the time that seemed like a lot, but of course now our NASA astronauts are in space six months or even up to a year. I absolutely want to hear more about your time in space, but let's go back in time first to Ellen as a young girl. What were you like as a child? What would your parents say you were like? Well, I loved reading. So I was always reading books. Then when I was 10, I started playing the flute, certainly both under the influence of my mom, who kind of always wished she had played an instrument. And she started us all on piano when we were younger than that. But that became a big

hobby, very serious one. I even thought about pursuing music and I still play my flute to this day and I got a chance to play my flute in space. So that was probably the main outside activity I did outside of school. Would you describe yourself as like a nerdy child, a very typical child? Would your parents be like, I don't know about Ellen. She's extra nerdy. Or did that love of science come later in life? Actually, I wasn't into science at all as a kid. Even in high school, I think I only took one science class, biology, because it was required. And somehow I had this idea that I just wasn't interested in it. So I came to all that later. Fortunately, I did like math and I always did well in math

in school. And so that was something that I took as much math as was offered at my high school. And once in college, that was what sort of ended up steering me toward the science and engineering field. So I would say I was a very good student. I took it seriously, pretty, I would say, quiet in general, although certainly around family or good friends, I would say pretty typical. I love that your love of science didn't necessarily make itself known at age seven. I think sometimes parents today are like, well, my child's never been an astronaut. They're not interested in

science. And they have like a third grader. I do think there's this increasing tendency towards encouraging your children to specialize in something, to specialize in a sport, in an instrument, in a subject, and to begin to steer their lives in that direction, you know, very early on. You see it especially in athletics. I'm not saying that there's no validity to any of those choices, but I just love hearing that you can come to that decision later and still be like the director of the NASA facility. And, you know, I was 11 when the Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon. So of course, everybody was talking about it, watching it. I was fascinated, but everybody was.

And there were no women astronauts. And even though there were some women working at NASA, I certainly didn't know about any of them. And so nobody would have ever asked an 11-year-old girl, oh, is this something you want to grow up to do? And it certainly didn't enter my head at that point at all that there might be a career trajectory for me that would include NASA or space or anything like that. Yeah, totally. The popularity of the book and movie Hidden Figures, et cetera, we're just now beginning to fully understand how many women actually were crucial to those missions, but that was not front and center at all. This was like manly work. It's the men going into space. Yeah, I totally know what you're saying. It wasn't even necessarily on your radar. That's

something girls could do. Exactly. wasn't even necessarily on your radar. That's something girls could do. Exactly. Okay. So you finished college and you decide you're going to go to grad school. At that point, when you went to grad school, were you thinking, I would love to get a job for NASA someday? It was still a little bit early for that. I changed my major several times. I really wasn't sure what I really wanted to focus on, but I thought, well, I should at least go explore some fields that use the math that I've been learning. And so, I went to talk to a couple of professors. One was a professor in engineering, electrical engineering. And it was clear he was not at all interested in having me in his department. He was like, well, we had a

woman come through here once, but it's a really difficult course of study and I don't think you'd be interested, which of course was ironic because I showed up specifically because I thought I might be interested. But then I got a very different reception from the physics professor I talked to. He said he was glad to hear I was interested in physics. He told me about some careers you could have if you majored in physics, which was actually really important because I didn't have a good idea of what a physics degree could lead to. And so he laid out some possible paths. And then when he found out I was finishing up the calculus series, he said, well, that's

great. You've learned the language of physics. So if you started into our classes next semester, you could concentrate on the concepts. And most of the students will be trying to learn those two things simultaneously. So I think you'd do really well. And I ended up majoring in it and minoring in math. And I was able to get some summer jobs where I worked in a research lab. And that's why I got motivated to go on to graduate school because I thought I'd want to pursue research. So I went off to Stanford. And near the end of my first year there is when the space shuttle flew for the first time. And a couple

years later, now I'm in the middle of getting my PhD, is when Sally Ride flew, the first American woman in space. And she had been a physics major and she had gotten to Stanford. And I really think I needed to see sort of all those things in common for it to really come to me that, well, maybe, you know, maybe this is something I could pursue. So I decided that as soon as I got my doctorate, I'd send in my application to NASA. But honestly, really never expected to hear anything back. Yeah, I could see how it would seem like a long shot. Exactly. A very long shot. Yeah. Not that many people are chosen to, first of all, work for NASA

in the space program capacity or even later to become an astronaut. It is an extremely long shot. So obviously you had something special though. So when you did apply and they called you or sent you a letter or whatever it was, what was that moment like for you? Well, first of all, it was three years later., NASA doesn't do a selection every year. And so it can be three years, four years, five years between selections. It was the first time I'd ever been on a NASA center, any NASA center, much less Johnson Space Center at the home of human space flight. Spent almost a week there. You had a lot of medical exams, but a chance to talk to current astronauts. Again, the first time I'd gotten to talk to any of them sort of one-on-one,

visited a lot of the training facilities, had an interview with the astronaut selection committee and made me want to be an astronaut even more, but I wasn't selected that year. However, NASA encouraged me to keep my application updated so that I could be considered again in the next selection, which was three years later. And that was when I was selected. So it was actually five years after I turned in my application. Did the Challenger disaster give you pause? Were you like, I don't know, or did you still feel confident that NASA would figure it out, that they wouldn't repeat the same mistake? What was going through

your mind when Challenger happened? I was still sure it was something I wanted to do. And I did trust that NASA would look into it and understand what happened and fix that problem. and understand what happened and fix that problem. You finally get the news that you are going to go and your family's all excited and you're like, this is my moment. This is a dream come true. What is the training even like? What do you have to do to get ready to go into space? Well, there's a lot of different aspects to the training. And NASA selects astronauts in groups or classes, right? So my class had 23 astronauts, fairly big class, five women. And we spend most of the first year together.

So we study lots of things. Some of it's just kind of catching everybody up on the various different kinds of science and engineering that are going to be particularly important for us, like reviewing orbital mechanics, and particularly when you're going to rendezvous with a spacecraft, what that might mean. And there are some physicists in the groups who are very familiar with it. Everybody has some kind of science and engineering background, but not necessarily in that field. and engineering background, but not necessarily in that field. And then we start to study the shuttle systems in detail. We get a big stack of workbooks, a couple of feet tall, and we were supposed to study those and then apply it when we went into the simulator. Well, I'd spent 10 years

in college, so that was very familiar to me. I'm like, I know how to study, I know how to learn. But there were other aspects that were not nearly as familiar to me, but maybe more to others, a lot of the more operational things. So we needed to learn how to fly in high-performance jets. Now, I had a private pilot's license, but I was certainly not a professional pilot. So I wasn't going to be flying front seat, but I was flying in the aircraft, could certainly take the stick once we were 200 feet off the ground or have it until we were about 200 feet before landing. So did learn to fly a lot of it, but a lot of it is about the communication and the navigation and of course the teamwork between you and the front seater. And that's all very applicable to the astronaut job and being on

a spacecraft as well. We had to learn how to land under a parachute on land and in water and learn how to signal a helicopter and what the sensation might feel like if you actually eject out of an aircraft. So all of those things, a little bit of land survival and water survival. My classmates who had been in the military and had been through all of this before, they were just out there kind of having a good time. How long does the training take? Well, the part that I just described was kind of the first year. Then in the second year, we were training about halftime and then assigned jobs in the astronaut office that were supporting the ongoing shuttle program.

So the training in the second year was a little bit more specialized. The pilot astronauts would start to fly in the shuttle training aircraft. So they'd start practicing how to land a shuttle at the end of a flight. And then mission specialists like me started to do things like robotic arm training and spacewalk training. So then essentially at the end of the second year, we're sort of basically trained. And then I got assigned to a flight. So then I started to roll into actual training with my crew for my mission. So take us back to the very first, the morning of your first space flight. What were you thinking and feeling? Well, it was a lot of excitement. And actually,

we were launching at 1.30 in the morning. So we were getting up, I forget, maybe around eight in the evening. So going to bed about noon, getting up at eight for the last few days before, so that we were shifting our bodies toward the schedule that we needed to be on. And looking forward to it, I mean, a certain amount of nervousness, but it wasn't about a personal risk. It was more basically a couple of years before that, we all have a variety of different jobs to do on the flight. So there's a lot of different kinds of things to remember and to think about. So kind of reviewing, you know, some procedures or last minute things. That's what we've been doing the last few days as we've been in quarantine and crew quarters. And then, you know, it's time to eat breakfast and suit up and head out to the launch pad. And you just kind of got, you know, once you crawl into the spacecraft,

this is like, I'm in the simulator. I've done this many times before. The ground team is prepared. I think that helps prevent you from being just kind of a little bit overwhelmed by the moment. Yeah, totally. You can't let your mind go there. You can't be like, now I'm going to think about everything that could go wrong. Like you can't allow yourself to do that. So what does it feel like? You're kind of sitting on your back. It has to feel like an insane amount of G-forces lifting off the ground. Is that accurate? Well, what I would say is it does sort of leap off the launch pad and you do get a variety of different G-forces during the launch and the launch part until the engines cut off is about

eight and a half minutes, but is not as high Gs as many people think. And that's because the shuttle design itself with the delta wings, the engineers sort of needed to protect the shuttle itself. And so the rocket was designed to not go over three Gs, not because of the people inside, but because of the shuttle and not wanting to put large loads, particularly on the wings. So you get to that three Gs at a couple different times during the launch, maybe at about a minute and a half in until two minutes. And then the solid rocket boosters, the two white rockets on either side of the main tank separate. Then you go back down to almost one G. And also all the vibration goes away because the solid motors are the ones that are really

causing a lot of the vibration and the liquid engines that are on the shuttle orbiter itself actually run pretty smooth. That was almost the scariest part of the whole launch for me is when we went back down to just over 1G because it felt like we'd stopped. And I thought that cannot be good. but you know, you could tell by through all the instrumentation that we were still going up. And so, you know, after five seconds, it's like, okay, it's all good. And then it builds back up to about three G's for say the last minute and a half or so. So it feels like somebody that weighs three times as much as you is sitting

on your chest. It makes a little bit hard to breathe. And if you have to lean forward or put your hands up for some reason, that can be difficult because you're working against that force. People have been on roller coasters. They've been under much higher Gs, but it's just for a second or two. And it's also usually kind of vertical through your head, whereas ours is through our chest. So it's, it's sort of a different kind of acceleration than most people have felt before. And then of course, when the engine shut off, you go instantaneously from these three G's to zero G. And, and so that's a really interesting transition. And your arms just kind of on their own, just sort of float up a little bit. I had a pencil on a string attached to my

kneeboard, and that just sort of floats up. And then you're ready to start the next phase of the mission. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office. With insane behind the scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guests are sitting next to me. Steve! It's my girl in the studio. It's my girl in the studio.

Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests. And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Lady 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. What was it like to look down at Earth? Well, it's just spectacular.

I mean, that and being in a microgravity environment are the two things that are just so completely different about being in space than anything that you can do on Earth. And I don't think you ever really get tired of looking at the earth and you're orbiting every hour and a half. So there's always something new and different to see. It's just spectacular. I can't imagine that moment where you're like, I am looking down at my planet. I wonder if you were so caught up in doing your job and making sure you're doing your job well, that it was difficult to sit and just like sit there with your mouth hanging open? Or did you have those moments where you were like, dang, look at that. Look at that space rock. Well, I will say you are really busy. And I'll also say that after I came back from my first

flight and people would ask me questions like, well, what did it feel like the moment the engines cut off? Or what did it feel like the first time you looked down on the earth? Or a lot of what I thought was, man, I was so busy. Like I didn't take the time to sort of consciously think about it. So I made a list of questions before my second flight so that I would be much more deliberate about thinking about those things. But I do remember on my first flight. So on the first day and a half or so of that flight, first couple of days, we were pointing the payload bay towards the sun because we were studying the earth's atmosphere. And part

of the information that we were collecting was the amount of light coming from the sun in different wavelengths. And because of that, the earth was moving around in the windows. So we weren't looking directly down on the earth. And so you could see it. And I thought, oh, this is fantastic. But then I got up on the morning of flight day three, going up to the flight deck and looking out the overhead windows than anything I'd ever seen in a photograph. So I do remember that moment. the food? We all watch the Sesame Street things where it's like, we're going to eat this tube of glop. You know what I mean? I don't even know how true that is. Is it trying to sleep in a weightless atmosphere? Is it being away from Earth? What's the most difficult part? I would say for me, it was just the mental energy that you expended throughout the whole day and everything that you do. All of the operational things that you do, you're following a checklist, a procedure,

every single step is important. I was doing some things like I was the primary robotic arm operator. So one of the days used the arm to lift a science satellite up out of the payload bay and deploy it into orbit. And there was a very, very specific procedure for that. And then a couple of days later, we came back, we rendezvoused with it, and then I needed to grab it and put it back in the payload bay. And, you know, literally every second, you're just really, really concentrating on that. But even as you say, you know, heating up the food or eating the food or getting ready for bed, it wasn't that they were difficult. You just need to be really methodical.

And you want to make sure that you're not flinging food around the cabin inadvertently. You need to be very deliberate, very methodical, thinking through each step. And when you do that for 16 hours a day, no matter what you're doing, going to the bathroom, you've got to be very, very careful. You're just mentally exhausted. And you're going from one type of activity, science, to robotics, to preparing dinner, to there were some secondary experiments we were working on. And each one, you kind of had to remember all of those things that your trainers had told you about that very specific activity. To me, it was a huge challenge that I really enjoyed, learning all that and then being able to put it into practice.

Yeah, totally. I can absolutely see what you're saying, that it's incredibly rewarding, but also human bodies have limits that it is a very challenging to be on, you know, like mentally very focused for 18 hours a day or 16 hours a day. Most of us want to veg out on Instagram for at least two to three hours a day. You know, like that was a tough meeting. I got to get some TikTok. So I absolutely know I can picture at least what you're talking about, how there is no phoning it in. There is no like, you know what? It's good enough. There's no good enough. It has to be done correctly. On a spacecraft. And you, I would imagine because there is so much teamwork,

you also feel the weight of like, I can't let anybody else down. I can't let myself down. I can't let my crew members down. I can't let NASA down. I can't let the country down. I need to perform at my best at this time. Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking about. And particularly when I was using the robotic arm and needed to capture the satellite, all of the data that it had collected on the solar wind during the two days it was out free-flying was all captured on the spacecraft. So unless you brought it back home, there was nothing. Yeah, totally. So I literally was thinking about the scientists that had spent several years of their lives helping to develop the instruments and that were looking forward to the data and

thinking like, I cannot let these people down. I know you had four space flights in total. Were you mostly operating robotic arms and doing experiments on all four of your flights? Did you have other jobs or other roles on your subsequent flights? I did have other roles. So on my first two flights, I really focused on the science, studying the Earth's atmosphere, the problem of ozone hole and ozone depletion. And the science and the robotics were probably the two main jobs. On my third and fourth flights, they were part of assembling the International Space Station program. And also on those flights, I was the flight engineer.

So that is the person who works with the commander and pilot in all the dynamic phases of flight. So launch, landing, rendezvousing with the space station, undocking, especially in training, you spend a lot of time together working through those because if something's going to go wrong, those are the times in flight where you have very little time to actually respond. So you have to be prepared to understand what's gone wrong and to work around that in a very quick amount of time. And again, I thought that was hugely fun.

I love the training. So I loved being in that role of flight engineer. And then got to operate the station robot arm and move a spacewalking crew member around, which is different than just a satellite because you're taking direction from that person on the end of the arm. And you're constantly kind of changing spatial coordinates in your head because sometimes the person saying, well, move me space station forward. And other times they're doing it in their own body coordinates, move me in toward the spacecraft and they may be upside down and in some weird configuration. So you're kind of

doing these mental gymnastics a little bit to make sure you're moving it correctly. And then one of my flights, our main job was to transfer supplies into the space station. This was before anybody was living on board. So we were preparing it. And so my job was essentially the person responsible for making sure all the transfers happened and that all of the equipment got stowed in the proper place on the space station. Oh my gosh. So interesting. I feel like I could just ask questions about what is it like in space all day long. You went on to become the director of the Johnson Space Center. And I wonder if you could speak a little bit to people who feel like perhaps spending money on a space program is not worth it. Like, why should we spend money on a space program in your estimation? Having been to space four times, having worked for, had a long career at NASA?

Why should we spend money on a space program? Well, it is about benefiting people on Earth. I mean, you know, that's what we're doing. Part of it is about expanding scientific knowledge. is supporting sort of our national leadership and our national posture, both showing developing new technology that we can do things as a country that haven't been done before, or other things that actually develop a new economy. And we're really seeing that right now, if you think about what the space economy is today and how many new companies are getting involved in different activities. That all grew out of what NASA has done for many years.

And that was the whole idea, that there would be a market that develops for this. Part of it is about leadership. And I think the International Space Station Program is a great example of that. We worked with four other space agencies representing 15 countries to develop this laboratory in space that would essentially do research. A lot of it's medical research that can be used anywhere. And more than 100 countries have been involved in it somehow now, either science that we're doing, a scientist from those countries, or maybe an educational activity where we've involved those countries. So that really does make it very

international. And then I would say, finally, inspiration. I think NASA for decades has been that organization that people, certainly across the US, but actually around the world, has said, People, certainly across the US, but actually around the world, have said, okay, they take on challenges. They challenge their employees to do things they haven't done before and to really step up. And because they can do it, I should set high goals for myself. And I think people have looked to NASA for inspiration ever since the 60s. And that's still the case.

Of course, I get to interact with students and lots of other people continue to do outreach, even though I'm retired from NASA. And it's still the case that it really serves that purpose. Yeah, I think you're exactly right. When NASA landed the Mars rover on Mars, and it was like that moment to me, I was literally, I was watching it in my car, just tears pouring down my face, just the inspiration of human ingenuity. I love it. It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. I find just that aspect of it incredibly inspirational. I totally agree. And I got to be at the Jet Propulsion Lab

for the Curiosity landing. And it was hugely exciting. And of course, been in Johnson Space Center's mission control for many, many different kinds of activities now. I feel just really, really fortunate to have worked at NASA. And I you know, I kind of have this NASA luggage tag on my luggage. So, which I don't think about that much anymore, but I travel quite a bit when people see that. They always want to talk about it and they see it in a very positive light. And that's a really good feeling. You have, as of this moment, I'm sure there will probably be more in the future, seven schools named after you. What an incredible honor, first of all. It is, yes.

As a longtime teacher, I know how much goes into selecting the name of a school. It is not a decision that communities take lightly. They're not going to name a school after a serial killer accidentally. Having a school named after you, let alone having seven schools named after you, what does that mean to you? Long before the first school that I heard about that was named after me, as I went around and talked about my career, education was always a key part of what I talked about because certainly it was a key to me being selected as an astronaut and having the kind of career that I had. Education and learning was important to my parents.

My mother in particular was just somebody that loved learning her entire life. She didn't have a chance to go to college when she was young, but as she was raising five kids, she would take one college class a semester at our local university, which is also where I ended up going, San Diego State. And 20 years later, in fact, two years after I graduated from San Diego State, she graduated. But the whole time I was growing up, she would be talking about her classes, doing homework, but she was always excited to learn new things. So that was just always something big, important, and doing well in school, or I would say being diligent about working at our homework and learning was important.

So I would totally agree. I don't think there's any higher honor I've ever received than having a school named after me and realizing and hoping that then that the kids, you know, for the next however many decades who go through that school, take some pride and some inspiration from that and maybe take education more seriously. I totally feel that. You mentioned that when you were young, it didn't even occur to you that you could become an astronaut, that that was an opportunity that girls could have. And I think we've made quite a bit of progress over the last few decades where women now realize that these things are within their reach, that they can become things of great importance professionally. But yet there are still too few women in leadership positions, and there are too few women in high-level science careers. And I wondered if you could

speak to that a little bit. Why do you think that is, and what can we do to fix that? it. Why do you think that is and what can we do to fix that? Certainly just culturally, there's a long history of, first of all, women being prohibited from a lot of different kinds of careers. And then even when that started to open up, people really didn't picture scientists and engineers when they thought about women. And I will say it's not just women. There are other underrepresented groups as well. And since I'm the first Latina in space, I often talk to Hispanic Latinx communities. And it's very much the same way throughout that community where they don't have a history of going into those fields, often sometimes individually explicitly discouraged, but other times it's just the cultural, the fact that they

never see anybody like them in those fields. And there's actually a fair amount of research and there's really three things that you can do to help get over that. One of them is role models. One of them is mentoring. And one of them is hands-on activities where students actually get the chance. And by hands-on, that can mean coding as well because software is something that's pretty associated with these careers and from which these underrepresented groups often don't have the same opportunities. But working on something where they actually get to work with hardware or software or think about a problem they want to solve, maybe something that either they're interested in or they see is important in their community, you know, the quality of the water or, you know, something like that is what can get students interested. And I'm working with a publisher and I'm going to be publishing a series of five bilingual children's books, one for each letter of STEAM, science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. And so the science one is out and it's called We Are All Scientists. And my thought process as I was writing this book was, what do I wish I had known about science when

I was little? And maybe I would have gotten interested in it a lot sooner. And really, science is about curiosity and about creativity in terms of the questions you might think of asking or how you might think of answering them. And I think those are things that kids, including girls, have in spades when they're young. And so the idea was young kids to start to think of themselves as scientists, very young, because of the fact that they're curious. Science is about discovering new things. Engineering is about solving problems. You're often working in teams. You're trying to help people with the problems that you solve. I think those are things that appeal to everybody. And yet they're not often portrayed like that. And so we're not getting everybody sort of involved or pushing them to at least try it and understand whether

it's something that they might want to study more. And you mentioned too, that you didn't even realize that this was a career that you could pursue until you saw representation of women in the field. Representation matters. As you mentioned, role models, it matters having somebody who is Latina or African-American or a woman or whatever it is, it matters to children. It helps them to be able to imagine themselves in that role and realize what is possible for them. Yeah, absolutely. My own story bears that out, just as you point out. If you could send one message to, let's say, a fifth grade child. I often think back to my own fifth grade Sharon, who was real curious, but often got scolded in school for asking too many questions. Now I ask people questions for a living.

So there. So there, take that. So if you could send a word of encouragement or a message to today's fifth graders, what would it be? The first thing I would tell them is we need you. There's lots of challenges to solve in this world and there's lots of things still to discover. And we need that talent. We need people with different kinds of ideas, different experiences, different brains. And we've excluded too many of those people for too long. And so I would say we need you. And then I would say it's really rewarding. It's interesting. It can really engage you. And I think for a career where you spend most of your waking hours, something that really engages you is a goal and you can actually make a living at it as well, which is another big goal.

So those are things that maybe I wouldn't have thought about when I was in fifth grade. I think we tend to overlook how rewarding careers in this field can be. We think of like high reward careers as being high touch with other humans. Like it's very rewarding to be a nurse or a physician. And that is rewarding. Of course, it's rewarding to be a teacher. Like those things are rewarding. But I think we often overlook how rewarding these kinds of careers can be because you really are not just changing the trajectory of history, but you are, as you mentioned, working on projects that directly benefit humanity. So not only is it interesting, not only is it a place you can actually get a job

and that puts food on the table, it also can be a tremendously rewarding career. Exactly. Thank you so much for being here today. This was fantastic. Fifth grade Sharon, love talking to you. Well, it was so fun talking with you, Sharon. It kind of takes me back and I really enjoyed reliving it for you. Thank you so much for being here.

Wasn't that so good? I love Ellen Ochoa. And what an honor to have seven schools named after you. She has a children's book out. We are all scientists. You can also visit her website, ellenochoa.com. Check out all of her resources that she has there. Thanks for being here. Thank you for listening to Hearer's Work. It's interesting. This show is written and researched by Heather Jackson, Sharon McMahon, Valerie Hoback, and Amy Watkin, edited and mixed by our audio producer, Jenny Snyder, and it's hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. We'll see you again soon. you