I can’t say that I remember too much about my early childhood.  Things like what my home used to look like before renovation, what my father looked like with longer hair, and why I chose to paint my room lilac are all memories that have escaped the confines of my head as I have gotten older.  However, distinct and strange memories have stuck around to be remembered by me, mostly memories of my brothers and our highly emotional and volatile interactions with one another.

It seems to me that most successfully recalled memories occurred around the always eventful family dinners at my home.  I can distinctly recollect, through the hazy memory-eyes of my four-year-old self, the instance when I sat down at the dinner table listening to my eldest brother, seven years my senior, speaking to the family about his most recently conceived life ambitions.  I looked up from the dinner table in horror when I heard the words ‘astronaut’ and ‘moon.’

As a little girl, I had already been blessed with an extremely overactive imagination as well as my mother’s “worry gene” and an overwhelming attitude of pessimism.  As you can imagine, when these two character traits happen to be combined, the results tend to be crushing thoughts about how terrible a situation could possibly become.  Therefore, when I heard words having to deal with outer space, I pictured in my child’s mind all of the terrible things that could happen to my brother while he was exploring the vast reaches of the galaxy.  I left the dinner table that night (after crying so hard that I barely avoided asphyxiation) knowing that I would never condone a family member of mine becoming an astronaut; in fact, I was so upset that my thoughts on space travel, to this day, are filled with horrifying ideas of what terrible events could unfold and the goosebumps on my arms appear at the mere thought of such travel.

Hence, when I received the emails from Frostburg State University telling the campus community about astronaut Ricky Arnold’s visit to his alma mater, I brushed off the idea of going and deleted the messages from my inbox immediately.  When Thursday, March 4 rolled around, I made the responsible decision to actually check my FSU email account and was rewarded with an urgent message from my professor stating that, as a class, we would be attending the 2 PM talk given by Mr. Arnold instead of regular class.  Unfortunately, I was less than eager to attend, thinking that I would have to sit again in an audience of other students listening to a man who knew nothing about my interests or me in general, but who probably was going to just give out advice on making the most of your life and your college education.  As sometimes happens with all of us, I realized only later how mistaken I was in my skepticism of the hour long talk and in my misguided assumption that I was wasting my time.

When Mr. Ricky Arnold first came onto the stage in the Performing Arts Center after having been briefly introduced by a university official, I braced myself for a long, boring dialogue that, to my surprise, never came.  Arnold announced to the assembled campus community that, rather than speaking to us about his journey from FSU to NASA, he wanted to share with us his home videos from his space shuttle mission in March of 2009.  The astronaut seemed completely at ease on the stage in front of so many people and, as the movie began to roll, he narrated the scenes and spoke to us, in suppressed excitement, about his shuttle mission to the International Space Station.

After graduating from FSU with a B.S. in accounting in 1985, Arnold decided to pursue his love of science and began working in 1987 at the United States Naval Academy as an Oceanographic Technician.  In 1988, he returned to Frostburg State to earn his Teacher’s Certification and proceeded to travel the world, teaching math and science first in Waldorf, Maryland, and later in Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and Romania.  Working and residing in the D.C. area for some time after his education at FSU, Arnold began taking classes at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and, in 1992, he graduated with a Master’s Degree in Marine, Estuarine, and Environmental Science.  In the early 2000s, Arnold discovered that NASA was looking for teachers with a math and science background to become part of their Astronaut Corps and he was hooked.

Arnold was accepted into the Corps in May of 2004 and, after completing the two year astronaut candidate training program, he was finally selected by NASA as a Mission Specialist.  On March 15, 2009, Ricky Arnold and his fellow crewmates took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the U.S. Space Shuttle Discovery on a mission to the International Space Station to repair the Station’s damaged solar panels.  While in space, Arnold and his crew smoothly and successfully carried out their mission and, after traveling 202 orbits and 5.3 million miles in 12 days, 19 hours, and 29 minutes, Space Shuttle Discovery landed safely back in Florida, to the delight of family, friends, and crew members alike.

As I sat by my peers listening to Arnold talk about his journey, I was struck not so much by his position as an astronaut or even his travels around the world, but by the passion with which he spoke about his education, his career, and his family.  With images of Arnold and his crewmates floating the International Space Station in zero-gravity hovering on the screen behind him, the idea of space still chilled my skin, but, this time, I finally understood that, though it may not be for me, this interest and travel in outerspace was suited for someone, and it was definitely meant for the man on the stage in front of me.

Still an extremely impressionable young female, I was completely taken aback by the sense of commonality and familiarity that I felt with Mr. Arnold and his personality.  Having, just earlier that afternoon, thought that I was entering the PAC Center to see yet another dull alumni speak about his education, I left that building at 3 PM on March, 4 feeling that I had gained something from that experience, even though I wasn’t quite sure what that something was yet.  Later, when I sat down at my home to write this very article, the answer suddenly came clear just as the words on the page appeared as my fingers typed them.  Passion, that was the answer; I had gained an undying and unparalleled appreciation for passion and that emotion in itself.

I have, many many times, felt fervent adoration and appreciation for concepts, things, and ideas in my life, but I have never been content to just be who and what I am, to be happy in my life just the way it is in that very moment.  It is always breathtaking to meet someone who seems to have unmatched love and passion for their life and for the things that they do; but it is easy to forget what happiness and zeal look like in a person.  In that one hour that I spent sitting in the cushioned seats of the Pealer Recital Hall at FSU, I learned more from a man that I had never meant than I have in countless days spent with those I love and know almost better than myself.  This latent lesson that I have learned so recently from a NASA astronaut who was simply visiting his alma mater is among the best lessons that I have ever had.  It is evident and clear to me now that, no matter where you are or who you are or what you are doing, the point is that without passion for what you do, you have next to nothing.