As a Teaching Assistant, I get to hear the opinion of a lot of professors. One particular professor commented to a class the reason why you should choose Mechanical Engineering as a degree, and reasons why you should not. Every reason he listed was a reason I chose this path for school. “Mechanical engineering is not for if you want to work with your hands. It’s not for if you want to be an astronaut. It’s not for you if you dislike math.”

My first step towards a career I’ll love is to completely ignore his “rules” for this degree.

Maybe NASA isn’t looking for engineers as astronauts. But even if I can’t go into space myself, I want to work and help place people up where I can’t go. Every person I help launch is putting me one step closer to my own dream. Maybe I won’t put a footprint on the surface of Mars personally, but if I can say I helped put them there, that’ll be fine enough for me. Because once one person makes it, more will follow, and that foothold is all I want.

Next is making people see the beauty of these endeavors.

Space will be a team effort. I’m not able to make a rocket on my own, launch it, colonize Mars. We’ll need biologists, technicians, doctors, on top of the engineers and physicists and astronomers. People don’t see space travel for the beautiful thing it is, they don’t see the possibilities. But if I can show them, if I can inspire one person, that’s one more person on my team. And that’s all I need to start. I’m studying Chinese, and someday Russian, because astronauts are the very definition of global. They can see how little borders or differences matter. None of those do matter when you’re orbiting our little rock, and staring down at it makes you realize how small we all are, how little we mean individually but how much we can achieve together.

And last, the final step on this long arduous path, is just not losing the fun.

I spent Saturday’s watching Star Trek with my dad. We’d spend holidays out with a telescope and peanut butter sandwiches while he pointed out the constellations. This yearning for something more, to do something out there, to explore, I’ve always had it, and I know that deep down I always will. That bad calculus test grade might be a little discouraging, and some professors might have strong opinions that can make me second guess myself. But as long as I always come back to that happiness, that core that has always been with me, there’s no reason I can’t reach that dream.

My dream might seem a little impractical, unattainable, I have my head in the clouds. Too perfect, impossible, unrealistic, but I like to think the journey and the small victories along the way are what make a field like space exploration worth it. And I’m loving every step of the way.

This creative plan is a submission for the JonesTshirts.com "Love Your Career" scholarship.