The Stars Will Align

By Michael Lin, JSC Co-op, Houston, TX

Hello INSPIRE Students,

Welcome to or welcome back to INSPIRE! I hope you have had a great semester at school so far and will continue to do well in school this year, as you also try to move up the leaderboard in INSPIRE.

I was in INSPIRE in 2010-2011, so two years ago. For those of you who did not know me, I will tell you a little bit about myself. I was born in Kansas, where I lived for 7 years. I moved to Plano, TX, at the turn of the century, where I basically spent my entire grade school life. I graduated from Plano Senior High School in June of 2011. I loved basketball and played on the school team. My junior year of high school, I was a member of High School Aerospace Scholars (HAS), which helped bring me to INSPIRE. I was in INSPIRE for only one year, my senior year of high school. I was able to do an internship through INSPIRE during the summer before my freshman year of college. I attended the University of Texas at Dallas my freshman year and will be soon transferring to University of Texas at Austin so Hook ‘Em! I am currently a co-op at Johnson Space Center on my first tour.

During my INSPIRE internship, which was also here at JSC, I worked on MPCV (Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle) through Lockheed Martin. It was an engineering-type of internship, as I did not know what I wanted to do in college. I have since moved over to the business office (yes, NASA has a business office, if you go down that path) and am working on budgets for the Space Station program.

I encourage you to take full advantage of INSPIRE! Use all the resources you have and ask all the questions you think of, as you are not only helping yourself for a very impressive college application but also beginning to build professional connections in the NASA community. I know the budgets were a little tighter for INSPIRE this past year, so there may not have been the same opportunities I had my year in INSPIRE, but still do the best job you can possibly do. My INSPIRE internship not only helped me get a co-op here at JSC, but this past summer I also interned at a company called Lewis and Ellis, where I worked on bid proposals for the Medicare program. NASA will not just open the doors for you and your future, it will blow them open, as recruiting managers light up when those four letters are on a resume. Keep this in mind, as it can only help as you grow older.

I have met several astronauts here at JSC, as they work in the same building that I am working in. I want to leave you with two pieces of advice that they told me. When I was in Scott Tingle’s office, he told me something along the lines of, “Look Michael, there isn’t anything that one of us on this floor is doing that you cannot do, if you work hard towards it.” He was referring to all of the astronauts, as they all sit on the same floor in the building I am working in. For some reason that has given me a determination to work toward my lofty goals, even harder, as the advice comes straight from an astronaut himself. Jack Fischer encouraged me to always prepare for the next step. For him, he always wanted to be an astronaut, and so he read all the bios of NASA astronauts to see how he could become more like them. He would always look one step ahead and see how he had to move up through the military to give him a better NASA application.

If you are in need some inspiration, look up the name Ginger Kerrick. She is a flight director here at JSC that I had the chance to meet. Her story is so heartbreaking and heartwarming, almost like falling into the Grand Canyon three times!

Just work as hard as you possibly can and the stars will align for you! Let Mr. Gerard know if you have any questions and he can pass them along to me!

Good luck,

Michael 

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