Susan Fehres chat 10/21/96 Susan, What was the reaction of your parents when you got your NASA position and did they support you and in what ways? My parents reaction to my NASA job - they were as amazed as I was. Had I realized I would get to work for NASA, I probably would have been more cheerful about my job search. *** Dear Susan, you look really young to have such a big job at what age did you start working and what is your age if you don't mind? I am 41, and I figure I must look pretty young because of basic immaturity - I like to rock-climb and motorcycle and do all sorts of silly things. *** Dear Dr. Fehres, my name is Elizabeth and I want to know how you spend quality time with your family and do you plan to have children and how will you balance career with kids at home? Dear Rachael, I do have a daughter, age 2 1/2, and I very much plan to have at least one more. I do my best to spend quality time with her (and my husband). We do a lot of hiking together, reading books, playing games, basically my weekends and evenings are family time, except for when my husband puts her to bed and I get to read science fiction or the newspaper. *** I am 13 yrs.old and my question is do you make alot of money and how important is making money to you? About my salery - yes I do make a lot of money, about two times the average salery in the US. I make about $71,000 a year. *** Dear Dr. Fehres, I am 16 my question is how long did you have to go to school and how important is undergraduate courses to your career choice? Dear Ann, I went to school longer than necessary. I took math and science every year in high school ( the smartest thing i ever did) Then I started college as a math major, because I loved math and didnt think about it much. I was also taking language and literature classes for fun, but I figured they were a good hobby, but a hard way to make a living. Anyway, I dropped out and worked a while, at unskilled jobs ( (bus driver, museum guard, assistant accountant, nurse's aide) and decided to get back to school and get some job skills. scholarships helped me stay in school till age 32. I could have finished my PhD by age 26 had I been more directed. *** Dear Dr. Fehres, I am 15 my question is was being an engineer your first career choice or did you switch around in college until you found a major you liked? Re was enginneering my first major - No , I am typical of women engineeers, many of us switched around because we didnt have clear role-models or clear job goals set by our parents. I majored in : Math, the Chemistry, then Forestry, then Mechanical ENgineeering with Applied Math. (as you see,I never took typing!) When at the age of 23 or so, I asked myself what I wanted to do for work , I decided I wanted to help solve pollution problems and get paid for that. That led me to politics (ugh) or else engineering. I didnt really know what engineering was, but it sounded ok. and it turned out to be great, actually. *** Is your career fun and interesting or just all hard work? Sometimes its fun; Some great people; Projects like Mars landers; Unusual freedom. I can go off to a university library and read, or work in the lab, or be at my desk. We even have surprises. They gave me $100,000 to spend on equipment, then took it away! *** Could you do your work from home? Could you be productive from home or do you think you have to go into the office? Could I work from home? Yes, I worked from home part time for four months after my daughter was born. Between part time work, sick leave and vacation, I only went about one month without pay. I brought my computer home from my office, and so I was well connected through email, not only to my research group but to people I interact with a lot at other NASA centers and in industry, and spent a lot of my time talking and emailing other researchers about projects we are involved in, and writing reports. I would be typing at the computer keyboard while my daughter slept in a baby sling on me. Mothering can be monotonous at times so it was great to continue a level of professional interaction part time, to have something to think about besides rashes, diapers and baby. It was my boss's suggestion to do this and because he supported this so well it worked out fine. One engineering professor I know has 3 kids. She worked mostly from her home office and had a babysitter there at all times. Because I can't work from home most of the time, I am more comfortable having my daughter at the very good day care center at my work. I hope every workplace will have them by the time you look for work. *** Dear Dr. Fehres,I am 19 and my question is were you everunderestimated by family, friends , teachers or mentors and if so how did you overcome that? Was I ever underestimated by family and friends - yes. In the sense that, in my earlier years, girls were expected to become full time wives and mothers, no alternatives allowed. It annoyed or disturbed my teachers that I was good at math, I could tell. It seemed to me the only way I could have an interesting life was to pretend I had been born male - so I was about as unfeminine a teenage as you could find - pink etc still nauseate me, because I thought I had to refuse to be female. I REALLY hope that things have changed by now. Your sense of self needs to come from within you. It would be nice to have adults or friends cheering you on, but sometimes that just isn't your fate. You can look around though and see that there are indeed great possibilities for you- you are a free agent. you make yourself. In school you dont have much choice, but that is just prepearation for an adult life as a real loose cannon. *** Do you think it's hard to get back into school after taking time off in other types of jobs where you didn't use your technical brain so much? It was easy for me to leave minimum wage, hard or boring jobs to go back to school - I was thrilledt hen, after I ran out of money the Financial Aid office gave me loans and scholarships. For graduate school in engneering, I had a National Science Foundation Fellowship, a high honor. I think it was based on my very high GRE exam scores (like an SAT for Graduate STudents) which resulted from all those unnecessary Lit and Language classes I took. *** Dear Dr. Fehres, I am 16 and my question is which spacecraft do you put insulation in and what are your favorite pet projects and do you plan on doing any inventions of your own? We're interested in what you do in your job and what kinds of spacecraft you work on. Spacecraft - I am doing some work on improving the Space Shuttle insulation, but that already works fine, so mostly I work on insulation for spacecraft coming back from Mars, which would be coming back faster than a mission from the Space Station so it would get hotter when it slows down in the earths atmosphere. Another spacecraft are Mars landers - we need to keep scientific instruments below melting temperature before they land on Mars! I am also working on insulation for cryogenic tanks - liquid oxygen (90Kelvin) and Liquid Hydrogen (20K) have to be kept cold enough to stay liquid. Day to day - I do lab measuremnts, build new materials for high and low temperatures... *** I saw the Movie Appollo 13. And I'm wondering about something. What material is the front of a space shuttle build of? It must be capable to resist a lot of heat. Yes, that is the hottest place on the space shuttle - friction with air heats it up to thousands of degrees. We use Advanced Carbon-Carbon composites there, where you noticed it was differnet from the body; also on the edges of the wings. *** Dear Susan; What college did you go to and do you reccomend it to other students wanting to pursue scinece and technology careers? My College (s) : you will laugh. Northern Ill University (Math) University of Illinios at Urbana(great but huge) Northweestern University Grad School (Great and beautiful) UC Berkeley (spectacular) I have been lucky enough to go to some great schools. For undergrads, the really greatschools dont pay as much attention to you as a less important school, because they need to concentrate on their grad students to get reasearch done. On the other hand, it is worth a lot to have a great school like U of I, MIT, Berekely, whatever, on your resume, so it may be worth the suffering and alienation. If you are planning on grad school anyway, you can go to a smaller school that may treat you better, since only your last degree counts in the prestige game. A great school is hard on your ego, (other smart student, JUST as good as you are ! It's horrifying at first) but it's very stimulating and the other students are all in the same boat as you are... I would go for the great school, and prepare myself for alienation and suffering. Does any of your work or research carry over into the commercial market - like clothing or automobiles? Dear Susan; My name is Andrea and I was wondering what high school did you go to and what you did for fun when you were a teenager? How much free time do you have and how many hours a day do you work now? Thank you for answering everything candidly my name is Pam Bowers and I have my astronomy girls in the planetarium with me and your insight will help them make some decisions about what life is really like as a scientist, thanks and clear skies. Susan - We are just so thankful for your delightful outlook on life. This is a great model for some of our students who are undecided about their careers. Nothing is engraved in stone and they will have a chance to pursue a career they feel pationate about if they get the basic foundation. Thanks for that remark. Nicely put - nothing is fixed except the limitations you put on your own self. Our school system is especially favorable to what I call "Re-Treads" - people who had one life and decide to make over their skills. The European and Japanese school systes prevent this. But this is part of U.S. individualism, I guess. We are still pioneers... Susan Fehres: . . . . Mon, Oct 21, 11:58AM PDT (-0700 GMT). . . [1005 ] That was fun.