#  Finding a Home at NASA   

##### by Kevin Urban (2006)

## Getting the Job

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| What does it mean to be a scientist?                                  |
|                                                                       |
| I\'ve known for a while now that a scientist is what I will be\--what |
| I\'ve been slaving over books late into the night to become. But      |
| still the question remains: what does it mean to be a scientist?      |
|                                                                       |
| It was a Wednesday afternoon, my observational astronomy professor,   |
| Dr. Dale Gary, came into our rooftop classroom casual and cool like   |
| usual, holding some papers, notebooks, and a few wires and filters    |
| for the telescope. This afternoon, although seemingly average, was a  |
| touch different\--nothing completely bizarre or out of the ordinary,  |
| just that instead of starting class off talking about the coming      |
| night\'s astronomy project, Professor Gary casually mentioned an      |
| internship with NASA, if any of us were interested\...                |
|                                                                       |
| I quickly came to my senses out of whatever daydream I may\'ve been   |
| having: the professor had my full attention. Ever since I had become  |
| an astrophysics major, those around me have been completely confused  |
| as to what I\'m going to do with such a major. Some people would ask, |
| \"So, umm, you're into horoscopes and stuff?\" To which I\'d have to  |
| explain the difference between astronomy and astrology. The more      |
| intelligent people around me, who kind of had an idea of what         |
| astrophysics might be, would ask, \"So, you plan on working for NASA  |
| or something?\"                                                       |
|                                                                       |
| Good question.                                                        |
|                                                                       |
| Of course I had thought about it. Working for NASA was definitely on  |
| my list of things to do\...eventually. I mean\--I didn\'t dream that  |
| it was any time in the near future: I have my undergraduate degree to |
| attain, never mind another five years afterwards for my doctorate.    |
| But here was the opportunity staring me in the face.                  |
|                                                                       |
| \"I\'m going to work for NASA!\" I thought. \"Maybe I\'ll finally     |
| figure out what all these years of schooling, months of solitude,     |
| days devoid of sleep, and hours saturated with books have been good   |
| for.\" To my dismay, just as quickly as the professor brought the     |
| subject up, he abandoned it for the night\'s lecture.                 |
|                                                                       |
| What we did that night, whether it was observing Saturn\'s moons or   |
| mapping out the trajectory of an asteroid, I couldn\'t tell you. All  |
| I know is that my pulse was quicker than usual, my awareness higher,  |
| and that my mind was racing with the excitement that comes along with |
| opportunity. I couldn\'t stop thinking about this internship. After   |
| the class ended, I approached the professor to let him know that I    |
| was very, very interested. He said he would email me the pertinent    |
| information and application requirements\...                          |
|                                                                       |
| Doubt? Surely I would be lying if I told you I thought that I would   |
| actually get this internship. Yea, I was determined to try my         |
| hardest\--write up a really good résumé, concoct a creative cover     |
| letter, make sure to get my two letters of recommendation in\--but I  |
| didn\'t honestly think for more than a few brief seconds at a time    |
| that I would land this internship. I just thought it couldn\'t hurt   |
| to try.                                                               |
|                                                                       |
| The wait\--nerves on end, insecurity rising\--began after I pressed   |
| the \"send\" button, emailing the intern coordinator, Ana Rosas, my   |
| \'credentials\' (a few pages that basically begged for a job, \"I\'m  |
| your man\--c\'mon, you gotta believe me!\"). It didn\'t take long for |
| the response to come back: \"Hi Kevin, the application deadline is    |
| over\....\" Lump in my throat. Pit in my stomach. I read the line     |
| again: \"The application deadline is over\...\"                       |
|                                                                       |
| #\$\*%!                                                               |
|                                                                       |
| \"Well, there goes that,\" I thought. A moment of misery passed       |
| before I finally realized, \"Wait a second!\" I read the entire email |
| this time. The second sentence clearly stated, \"But you may still    |
| submit.\"                                                             |
|                                                                       |
| What? I could still get this thing. Sweet!                            |
|                                                                       |
| I decided I couldn\'t wait around hoping someone would peruse my      |
| résumé and\--maybe\--like it enough to get in touch with me. I began  |
| emailing research scientists at NASA\'s Goddard Space Flight Center   |
| asking each if they would accept me as an intern. To my elation, most |
| emailed me back. Unfortunately, I never found the \"Yes!\" I was      |
| looking for\--just a longwinded \'Nope,\' \'Not really,\' or plain    |
| old \'No\', time and again.                                           |
|                                                                       |
| \"Well, at least I gave it my all,\" I told myself. I emailed Ana     |
| Rosas once more, asking if anything opened up. Nothing. Darn. So,     |
| that was that, I gave up on the idea. After all the hype and          |
| excitement, I wasn\'t going to be working for NASA.                   |
|                                                                       |
| Or so I thought.                                                      |
|                                                                       |
| It was the last week of school before finals began\--I was on the     |
| phone with a buddy of mine, telling him I was planning on moving in   |
| for the summer when I got the call:                                   |
|                                                                       |
| **Ana:** \"Hello, is this Kevin Urban?\"                              |
|                                                                       |
| **Kevin:** \"Yes, it is.\"                                            |
|                                                                       |
| **Ana:** \"Hi. This is Ana Rosas, are you still interested in working |
| for NASA?\"                                                           |
|                                                                       |
| I think it is obvious how I responded.                                |
|                                                                       |
| ## Working at NASA                                                    |
|                                                                       |
| **Ana:** \"You\'ll be using some PHP, which Dr. Thompson said you can |
| learn when you get down here. But you definitely ought to know        |
| HTML\...\" I didn\'t respond. \"Do you know it?\"                     |
|                                                                       |
| Uh-oh.                                                                |
|                                                                       |
| Panic sirens began screeching in my head. The only two things I knew  |
| about HTML were making links and putting up images. Pretty much       |
| nothing!                                                              |
|                                                                       |
| **Kevin:** \"Umm, yea\--taught myself everything I know\...\"         |
| finishing the sentence in my head, \'\...nothing.\' (gulp)            |
|                                                                       |
| The next few seconds were dizzying. I suddenly wasn\'t sure if I was  |
| going to get the internship or not\.... It was the longest moment     |
| I\'ve ever known.                                                     |
|                                                                       |
| \"Wihoo!\" I shouted, jumping in the air and clicking my heels. \"I   |
| landed the internship!\" When the rush wore off, I realized I didn\'t |
| know anything about PHP or HTML. \"Better get to work,\" I thought.   |
|                                                                       |
| I had two weeks\--and I didn\'t waste any time. For eight hours a     |
| day, five days a week, I drilled myself in HTML coding, finding it    |
| easy to master. I moved on to an extension language to HTML known as  |
| Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and even began teaching myself a little |
| bit of javascript before I left for Maryland.                         |
|                                                                       |
| When the day came to leave, I said my goodbyes to family and friends. |
| I couldn\'t help but to feel like a boy setting off to become a man.  |
| As I drove off, I waved my hand out the car window in mock-slow       |
| motion, trying to be dramatic as possible as my brother faded into    |
| the distance. He played along quite well and called out, \"Go get     |
| \'em, kid!\"                                                          |
|                                                                       |
| When I arrived at NASA I didn\'t know what to expect. I basically     |
| knew my job was going to consist of computer programming, something   |
| that two weeks ago I had no experience with, and that I was working   |
| for a project called the International Heliophysical Year (IHY).      |
| That\'s it. Other than that, I was hoping my \'mentor\' (that\'s what |
| we call our supervisors) didn\'t expect too much of me.               |
|                                                                       |
| I guess you can say\...she did.                                       |
|                                                                       |
| I remember with clarity not understanding a word she said. \"Could    |
| you create for the IHY website an intelligent search tool that        |
| will\...\" I wiped the sweat from my brow and thought, \'Kevin, you   |
| really got yourself in a mess this time.\'                            |
|                                                                       |
| I meticulously searched Google for key terms I heard her say, such as |
| \"content management system,\" \"search tool,\" and \"freeware.\"     |
| Although I began learning more and more about these computer-related  |
| topics, I still was in the dark as to what I was to do with any of    |
| this knowledge\... When all hope seemed lost, Dr. Thompson casually   |
| mentioned that a web content management system called \"Plone\" might |
| be useful to me, but she wasn\'t all too sure and just left it at     |
| that. Plone was to be the answer I was looking for and the bane of my |
| first month and a half.                                               |
|                                                                       |
| You see, Plone offered, to those who were equipped with the skill to  |
| use it, everything that Dr. Thompson was looking for, specifically    |
| intelligent website/database search capabilities. It is considered to |
| be one of the best web content management systems available. The more |
| I read about it, the more I knew: this is what I need to complete the |
| task I was given.                                                     |
|                                                                       |
| One little problem stood in my way: I was not equipped with the skill |
| to use it.                                                            |
|                                                                       |
| To make matters worse, I found that Plone was built on a \"web        |
| application server\" (another term I had no clue about) called        |
| \"Zope,\" which was built using the freeware programming language     |
| called \"Python.\" Questions plagued my mind: What exactly is Plone?  |
| How do I use it? Do I need to install something? Do I need to learn   |
| Zope or Python to be able to use Plone?                               |
|                                                                       |
| \"Oh, I just want to go home and start over again tomorrow,\" I       |
| thought.                                                              |
|                                                                       |
| Home. I almost forgot to mention it\--the place where some of my      |
| fondest intern memories were made.I knew I wasn\'t going to commute   |
| from New Jersey to Maryland everyday\--that\'s just plain ridiculous. |
| So I had to come up with a place to live: somewhere nice, somewhere   |
| close, somewhere cheap! Living alone was out of the question when I   |
| saw that it\'d cost me \$800+ per month. \"Maybe I can find some      |
| roommates,\" I thought.                                               |
|                                                                       |
| I remembered receiving a list of emails of the other interns, so I    |
| decided to send out one big, mass email asking if anyone was          |
| interested in\--maybe\--renting a house. That same day I also         |
| received an email from another intern, Robert Niffenegger, looking    |
| for some possible housemates too.                                     |
|                                                                       |
| Robert, who I came to know as Bob, checked Craig\'s List (an internet |
| classifieds webpage) for houses located near the Goddard Space Flight |
| Center. A few emails back and forth, a few to some other interns,     |
| some help from the intern coordinator, and\--BAM!\--Bob and I had     |
| ourselves a house with three other interns.                           |
|                                                                       |
| The best advice I can give about an internship with NASA\--nay, any   |
| internship\--is this: if you get the chance to rent a house with a    |
| bunch of other interns, do it! J.D., the main character from my       |
| favorite TV show, \"Scrubs,\" a sitcom based around the lives of      |
| hospital interns, once said: \"I challenge anyone to survive as an    |
| intern without a close group of friends to lean on.\" Yea, I\'m sure  |
| it\'s possible to get on without a close group of friends, but        |
| there\'s nothing like sitting around a dinner table with people who   |
| all share a common interest:                                          |
|                                                                       |
| **\"Recent research suggests that quantum teleportation may some day  |
| be a possibility.\"**                                                 |
|                                                                       |
| **\"Yea, and those researching quantum dot technology claim that the  |
| possibility of invisibility ain\'t far off either!\"**                |
|                                                                       |
| **\"Sweet.\"**                                                        |
|                                                                       |
| **\"Definitely. Pass the mashed potatoes.\"**                         |
|                                                                       |
| Sometimes, as an intern, work can become overwhelming\--a problem     |
| with your programming code, an equation you can\'t figure out, a      |
| machine you need to use isn\'t working. I can\'t imagine having to go |
| home to a lonely apartment after a long, stressful day and having     |
| nothing to do but to wait for tomorrow. Living with other interns, it |
| was impossible to mope in loneliness and self-defeating               |
| thoughts\--there was never a moment we weren\'t doing something,      |
| making it hard to stay stressed for too long. We cooked dinner for    |
| each other, played video games together, watched every single episode |
| of \"Scrubs.\" Some nights we would all go out to play tennis, others |
| we would go downtown to D.C. for the night. We even were able to host |
| a few parties at our house, which we called \"the NASA House\" and    |
| joked that our fraternity name was Nu Alpha Sigma.                    |
|                                                                       |
| Living with four other interns also gave me the opportunity to        |
| observe their daily progress, to witness them grow as scientists.     |
| Derrick , 23, a mechanical engineering major, worked on a robot       |
| called the \"12-tet\" that will eventually scale the terrain of Mars; |
| Colleen , 21, an astrophysics major, created an interface between a   |
| telescope and computer in the programming language IDL for GISMO, a   |
| project that when completed will allow astronomers to observe         |
| galaxies further away than anything yet possible; Bob , 19, a physics |
| major, developed a program that simulates the thermo-momentum of the  |
| surface layer of the moons of Saturn; and Dan , 22, a physicist       |
| turned mechanical engineer, contributed to designing/researching      |
| microshutters for the James Webb Space Telescope, which will allow    |
| multiple objects to be observed at one time by the telescope,         |
| therefore increasing the amount of data that can be collected per     |
| unit time.                                                            |
|                                                                       |
| Outside of the house, back at NASA, I met scientists and engineers    |
| daily who worked on such renowned projects as the Solar Dynamics      |
| Observatory (SDO), the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), the |
| Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO), and the Reuven      |
| Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI). I was able to |
| talk with these successful people, ask them questions, and sometimes  |
| even swap emails. Moreover, every Wednesday, a research scientist     |
| would do a lecture for the interns with topics ranging from solar     |
| storms to society\'s effects on the ozone layer to magnetic fields.   |
| This gave interns the opportunity to see what else is going on at     |
| NASA outside of their own little niche, and put names to faces of     |
| scientists who have impacted science, technology, and society.        |
|                                                                       |
| While interning at NASA, I learned a lot about the Sun and its        |
| effects on Earth\--about space weather. One task I was given was to   |
| create a website that can relate to the non-specialist everything one |
| needs to know to survive the upcoming space age\--the true space age  |
| where the common man will successfully inhabit the vacuum of space,   |
| where trips to the moon will be routine, and the idea of visiting     |
| mars will be a question of vacation location\--not science. The       |
| website, which I call the Space Weather Survival Guide, can be found  |
| at www.spacesurvival.org. It\'s not much, I\'ll admit, but just know  |
| that behind every line of code, every graphic I designed, was a day   |
| filled with fun, friends, and\--especially\--a few cups of coffee.    |
|                                                                       |
| Sitting here, writing this, reflecting on my summer at NASA, I cannot |
| think of one bad memory. In a single summer, I feel I\'ve accumulated |
| a lifetime of experiences: I learned to play tennis, went whitewater  |
| rafting, joined an acting class. I learned the computer programming   |
| language Python, the basics of using a Unix shell, the intricacies of |
| designing a website. I traveled to D.C. on a regular basis, visited   |
| Annapolis, saw the bay of Baltimore. I went to baseball games, a      |
| concert, checked out the local scene. Most importantly, I made        |
| friends who I will never forget, and I got to share these experiences |
| with them. Intellectually I\'ve grown, emotionally I\'ve matured. I   |
| came to NASA unsure of myself, but tomorrow I will be leaving,        |
| knowing full well that I have an incredible future ahead of me, being |
| a scientist.                                                          |
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