Working With Rocket Scientists

I always thought I was a smart guy. I could have done better in school if I had really tried, but I still passed everything. Everything I set out to do, I did well, like photography, working on mechanical things, etc… The one thing I could never wrap my head around was math. I excelled in English, even testing out of all my English courses in college with a perfect score. I tested out since I already had too many other things to take. I remember going to the classroom to get our test results. The Professor said there was one perfect score. We all looked around to see who that person might be. The Professor walked over to where I was sitting and dropped the test on my desk.

Fast forward to my current job, I work with real Rocket Scientists. I am amazed every day at how smart these people are. I listen to what they are working on, and it all goes over my head. Math is a language to them. The one thing some of these people lack is common sense. It is not unusual to see one of the smart guys walking around at work with two different kinds of shoes on or with untied shoes. I recall one time when I was supporting a meeting where a guy was going to present a new venture to one of the company CEOs. This guy showed up with half his shirt untucked, and his hair looked like he had just gotten out of bed. I came really close to saying something to him before he went into the room, but decided not to. That meeting went well, and he is now the program manager of that successful idea. That meeting was several years ago, and the program he manages will soon become a reality to the public.

Last week I was supporting a meeting that involved Rocket Scientists from NASA and other contracted companies. I set up the room to seat about 80 people, with microphones on the tables and power strips at each table. Everyone these days has a laptop during all-day meetings. Just before the meeting started on the first day, a guy came up to me holding a power strip and asked if I could help him with it. I asked if he wanted to plug it in somewhere. He said he needed it for his laptop. I asked where he was sitting, and he pointed out the seat at one of the tables. I said, “…you could plug in your laptop to the power strip that is in front of your table.” He said, “Oh ok that would work,” then handed me the power strip he was carrying.

Since these meetings cover several sites across the country, all of us who support these meetings connect via IM so we can communicate to keep the meeting moving along. I had mentioned the guy with the power strip to my counterpart at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. We talked about how these guys could put a rocket into space, but some of them lack common sense. We decided that common sense is the better thing to have if given the choice between being rocket-scientist smart and having common sense.

I truly respect all the people I support and go out of my way to ensure the technology they use to communicate works perfectly. They are great people to work with.