Yup, you read that right. And I have NASA to thank for it. 😉
So let me say this first… I know sometimes college can be a little intimidating. Once I left high school, it felt like everybody and their mamas were expecting me to be perfect. Society has us convinced that to be successful, we’re supposed to either go the military route OR finish college in four years, know exactly what we want, maintain a 4.0 GPA, have a job to support ourselves, begin our career immediately after graduating, et cetera… and hey, some people do just that. But I’m here to tell you that if you don’t fall into that category, it does not mean that you failed.
Right now, I’m going on my third year of college and still working on my Associate’s degree. For a while, I went to college full-time and had a full-time job… but let’s be real – it was NOT for me; so, I quit my desk job and focused strictly on school, babysitting here and there to have some money in the bank. I’m not exactly in the position I thought I would be in when I threw my high school graduation cap in the air in 2014. It turns out that even when I thought I knew what I wanted to do in life, I didn’t, and I ended up making a lot of huge changes along the way.
I began my college journey in August 2014. Most people don’t know this but I started as an interior design major! All my life I was an artist, and I was confident that design was the perfect career for me. I watched a ton of HGTV and I had these plans to finish school in four years, move to DC, and become a big-time designer. It was only a few months later that I watched Interstellar in theaters, which revived my love for space and science and inspired me to change my major to mechanical and aerospace engineering. Talk about a 180 degree turn – that change surprised everybody, myself included!
As an engineering major, I became a better student overall and found fulfillment in taking on activities outside of school related to STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) outreach and education: I traveled to NASA Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral to report on a cargo launch to the International Space Station, I volunteered with the engineering club at my college to bring STEM to visitors of the annual airshow here in Virginia Beach, I became a National Community College Aerospace Scholar (NCAS) with NASA and interned at NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) in Hampton, and more. Later I even returned to LaRC as a paid student assistant to help guide the next NCAS workshop. 💪🏽
Well, when I was back at NASA in April of this year (yeah… it’s still surreal for me to say that), I spoke with one of my mentors about my new interest in computer programming and how I could fit that into my career and goals. I told her that I began a course in C++ that semester, and how the course helped me realize how much I enjoyed coding. I loved solving problems and the joy that came with finally creating a well-executed program. It always left me hungry for more! I told her how in my past engineering courses, I also learned a little bit of Arduino and Matlab, and I had a lot of fun doing so even when most of my peers hated it. To be honest, I even began to recall many moments that I’d stay up late at night on my laptop writing programs just for fun! Best of all – it was something I was actually very good at it. I have always been a quick learner, so there were often times that I finished early and was the one helping other students in my class. My dilemma was that I had invested a lot of time into engineering and didn’t know the first thing about having a degree in computer science or where it could take me. She reassured me that computer science is actually a quickly growing field that is very versatile – and in need of more people, especially young women like myself.
As you can imagine, after hearing this I decided to take a chance by getting out of my comfort zone, and I officially changed my major to computer science. After doing so, my counselor told me that I’m only a few classes away to finishing with my Associate’s degree (yay!), then I can finally transfer to a different college to finish my Bachelor’s probably sometime around 2020. This is the path I have in mind now, but as I’ve learned in the past… who knows where it’ll take me next.
Amidst all this craziness, I have learned that true happiness will come only when I follow the passion and fire inside me. I began to just trust that it will all make sense in the end. I know that everyone’s path will be different and each of our futures are unwritten… and although most of it is uncontrollable, the attitude we carry is always our own hands. 😎
Thanks, NASA!
Wishing all of you the best of luck as you find your way.
Kayla J. Dio Robinson 