I went to school at night in L.A. to brush up on my engineering while I applied to the astronaut program. I really did not know if I would get in. It was the year after the Challenger accident in 1987.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
And then I graduate two years later, in 1998, with my class. And, since then I've been here in Houston for training basically. And I was very happy to be assigned to this mission.
It took me a long time to get selected as an astronaut. In fact, I applied for 20 years before I was selected.
I was selected to be an astronaut on a military program called the Manned Orbiting Laboratory back in '67. That program got cancelled in '69 and NASA ended up taking half of us.
I was in school, but I wasn't into school. I wasn't doing what I wanted to be doing in school, which was film studies. That was what I intended on doing, but I didn't go away to a university because I wanted to stay in L.A. and audition while I took classes, so I elected to go to a community college and just take G.E. courses. It was terrible.
Eight months later, having left Columbia, I was studying physics in a summer program and working in Colorado when I decided to enroll as a graduate student in biophysics.
I went to a public high school with a magnet program for law and psychology. But right before my junior year, I decided that I wanted to leave and become an actress, so I graduated early and moved out to L.A.
In fall 2007, I stood at the midway point of completing my undergraduate studies at Columbia. I studied every moment that I wasn't sitting in class. I was very focused on maintaining a solid GPA, so I could go on to law school.
I applied to Yale, and I got in.
I was a naval officer and aviator. I tested airplanes and got selected to be an astronaut later on.
I progressed through my schooling, undergraduate and graduate degrees, excited about math and science and engineering, but really didn't think about being an astronaut at that point. It was kind of unreachable.