Astro-Nut 👨🏽‍🚀

How many nights did I spend looking at hundreds of qualitative theorem from Bernoulli’s equation, to why the Gravitational Redshift and the prediction of General Theory of Relativity work timelessly together. Quantum physics to Laws of Energy and mostly what I remember is being broke and trying to figure out how to shake the vending machine enough to get a second bag of chips at 3:00AM in the morning 🤣

No matter the school, the Engineering building was much more than a concrete 3-story quadrilateral institutional platform of learning. It was everything from a Hotel, Social outlet, Vaudeville Act, Place of solitude, Comedy Club Central, all-day classes and a place of feeling appreciated and demoralized sometimes all in the same day. But I was amongst common goal-oriented dream chasers like myself that couldn’t stop asking questions about what is unknown.

I can recall the walk of shame, exiting an exam that left no doubt in my mind, that it was printed in a foreign language. There was nothing like the feeling I felt in Structural Dynamics class during my midterm exam, and the minute our instructor allowed us to turn over the exam. It took on the astonishment of 35 engineers looking around like- “This doesn’t resemble anything like what I studied” 🫣 It was a sad day after a previous all-nighter filled with 2 packs of Twizzlers, Cold pizza, 2 Red Bulls, M&M Peanuts, airplane flying contests, sprint races down the hallway in socks and a microwaved hot pocket that burned the bridge of my mouth, somewhere south of midnight. I wonder did anyone ever sue them for that……….

The days seemed endless, like they would never end and looking back I can’t remember half of the stuff I learned. The kicker, was being in class with my Texas Instrument TI-81 deriving numerous equations, only to learn that in the industry, EVERYTHING is done by super-computers and not by hand. I kept my TI-81 for nostalgic purposes. It was my lifeline and connected to me probably like this generations value there cell-phones like a 3rd arm attached to their body. But I do know that if you were caught out there in one of Dr. Chen’s flash Pop-quizzes without it….. you were screwed!

Then there was Organic Chemistry (O-Chem) 🧪 The one class that almost single-hand-idly was the foundation of contemplating switching my major to Business Management🥹 No matter how much I received help in this class it just wasn’t clicking. You can give me finite element and structure stress points of a Cantilever-beam any day over this! Getting out of college with a loooow C, in O-Chem was a monumental achievement for me.

I have fond memories of my first Internship with NASA, through the University of Cincinnati, and staying with the Tri-Delta Fraternity house on Frat row. It was also the first time I was ever called the N-word, to my face anyway. Just a random person at a light, when I first arrived in town, with my Jeep 4×4 packed in the back with suitcases for the long summer ahead. Too bad the rubber-ducky movement wasn’t created then or I would have been all over that! I digress. Im happy to say this outlier was not indicative of the amazing people and friends I made that summer. But for that moment it surely felt like maybe I had made a huge mistake accepting this global internship. But my gut told me that there was no turning back and to push through anything that gets in my path.

College was a great time and I have so much respect for my professors and all they try and achieve day-in and day-out. I realized that having dinner with my professor spoiled me to the core and I actually thought this was normal for college life. It was nothing to have dinner with Professor Jones, filled with deep conversations surrounded by true thought provoking statements, that I clung to like a moth to a flame. Graduate school many years later, sealed the deal that I had been in a meta-universe in undergrad and a rainbow unicorn of sorts.

It’s funny Mr Jones, reminds me of Laurence Fishburne as the knowledgeable Afrocentric Studies instructor in the movie- “Higher Learning”. Yes, this was my experience in college, and a man who challenged more than I could even comprehend till much later. He is the one that convinced me to take the NASA internship after receiving the acceptance letter. I remember when he gave me the letter and he probably saw the shear look of fear that came over my face. He prefaced his speech, that students from Purdue, MIT, Harvard were all represented in this special internship. Was this tidbit of intel, supposed to get me excited about taking it. All I could think to myself is, how could I compete with these students that go to these huge schools with million dollar budgets, and I had to travel 20 miles to Auburn University just to use there simulator to complete my projects. This was major for a broke college student, but nonetheless, it was endured. I reflect back on these things as turning points in my development. I had daily choices to “give up or find a way to make it work”. That mantra engrained a reassurance and self-courage to never give up.

Mr. jones had a way of building you up and making sure you were prepared, even if deep-down you weren’t ready to accept the knowledge baton that he was passing off. It was a right of passage and an internal belief that I could compete with the best of them, and preparation was the driver that kept me motivated to keep reaching at all costs.

This next step was a rude awakening with my first internship being the 1st floor, to the long elevator ride I was about to embark on. I was greeted at the front door of Tri-Delta by a big smile and so I didn’t know if that meant general consideration and empathy for a new face, or a hidden agenda waiting to present itself at any moment. I was so glad that my normal Spidey-Senses were way off base. Everyone was friendly, kind and all had multiple interests and personalities as most of the fraternity members were from all over the country. These Guys knew how to party, and not a bad way to spend the summer, in a 10 room super house with a chef and a hot tub that seemed to always be on, and with someone in it. I was no novice to partying, but these guys, let’s just say embraced the art of partying into a rare art form, for all that visited. I had never seen guys that could put the work in during the day in the classroom and go to the paint hard on weekends as well. I guess that’s what college was all about and I wasn’t ready for the Jedi to Senseí level I was being schooled on. My project that summer was deriving a program for an automatic control system that stabilized a moving body. It was a mere flash in my mind compared to the fun and experiences I had with these guys when we left campus. I think I became a professional Corn hole player by the end of the summer, and made it to the Wall of fame. One of my best internships ever!

Astro-Nut 👨🏽‍🚀