QUESTION:
Was there a time when you thought you were not going to achieve 
your goal of becoming an aerospace engineer, and if so, what kept 
you going?

ANSWER from Donna Shirley on April 11, 1997:
I always knew I wanted to have something to do with airplanes.  I was a
pilot when I was 15.  When I was 10 and found out that aeronautical
engineers built airplanes I decided that was what I wanted to do.  At 11 or
12 I read "The Sands of Mars" by Arthur C. Clarke and got very interested
in space exploration.

I went to college and majored in aerospace engineering over the objections
of my advisor.  When I was a junior I got completely burned out because it
was so hard.  I changed majors to journalism - creative writing!  I
finished that degree and became a specification writer at McDonnell
aircraft in St. Louis.  After doing that job for awhile I decided I was a
better engineer than many of the engineers who were actually getting to do
engineering, so I went back to school and finished the aerospace
engineering bachelors degree in a year.

So what kept me going was that I really wanted to do that kind of work,
even when I got very discouraged.

Donna