“Obviously my mom has different interests from me. She’s very into teaching. But I think that she emphasized the value of hard work and education. I think that really impacted me because there were times when a lot of people would feel like something wasn’t possible, or that it was too difficult — and I always had that knowledge in me that everything was possible with the right amount of hard work and education. Just keep trying and keep working. That has been very helpful throughout my career.
“Especially in high school — no one from my area was really familiar with NASA. Especially when I decided I wanted to go to MIT. No one really thought that it was possible for someone from the middle of nowhere in the Appalachian Mountains to get into MIT and eventually work at NASA. They just thought it was some crazy long-shot dream. I definitely got told to look at more realistic dreams: become a teacher, work for a local company. So I definitely had to keep telling others, ‘No, NASA is my dream, and I’m going to keep working until I’m able to achieve it.’
“Now my whole family likes to brag that they have a rocket scientist daughter who works at NASA.”
— Casey Denham, Pathways Intern, Langley Research Center
Image Credit: NASA / Mark Knopp
Interviewer: NASA / Thalia Patrinos