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When I was very little.
I loved space. I loved Star Trek.
And in the fourth grade
I stumbled across the term, "Astronautical Engineer"
and I said,
"This is what I want to be".
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I've got a long history of family service,
and so I knew I wanted to serve.
So I went to the Air Force Academy.
I majored in astronautical engineering,
and my first two years on active duty
were graduate school here at MIT
But I didn't have a great background I found out later in linear algebra.
So my first semester here at MIT out of the Academy,
I got a B and a C.
and for grad students, a C is basically, "You failed, but you tried."
which just lit a fire underneath me.
And that was when I discovered MIT's OpenCourseWare.
I basically, on my own time
took what would have been two linear algebra courses
in the span of about two months.
and the next semester I had an A and a B,
and that B was the last B I got at MIT.
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After that, I went to pilot training
I did seven tours of combat.
I was injured in the middle of it.
Not related combat, not related to my training.
So I was medically retired and at the time that I got out, I was doing
poorly enough that
I was not sure I was going to live more than a few years.
So that fourth grader who wanted to be
an astronautical engineer, I was going to take that all the way.
And I knew I wanted to come to MIT.
But I had been out of academia for almost ten years by that point.
So again, I knew I needed to get caught up to where the rest of my peers would be.
So I applied to Auburn University
to get a second master's degree in computer science,
but I had no undergraduate degree in computer science.
So I went back to MIT's OpenCourseWare, and I took courses in
computer architecture, networking, operating systems,
algorithms was a big one.
And having done really well in he program there, I think
MIT finally accepted me.
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I work with small unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs
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We mainly focus on search and rescue type of applications.
So we have one or more vehicles using a variety of different sensors
trying to train the vehicles in such a way that they can accomplish the task
pretty much by themselves without any intervention.
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So the stars aligned.
I'm doing something that I love and that I hope will have a very
positive impact on
not only my brothers and sisters still wearing the uniform, but everybody.
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Especially since I was physically unable to continue to serve.
It means so much to see young people who are continuing to raise their hand
and say, "I'll put myself in danger in order to protect those that I love,
and the ideals that I love".
And then, of course, you also want
tthat sense of community with your fellow veterans.
So I'm working with student veterans
and GA3, which is the Graduate Association of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
I'm doing pretty well now.
I found a diet and exercise routine that
helps me control my symptoms.
Throughout my life I've kind of rejected being on the ground.
I'm constantly looking for another way to be in the air.
I found out MIT has a group that's doing acro-yoga.
Great fun, great group of people,
all extremely flexible, extremely strong,
very much engineering work. with humans involved.
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So, collaboration of efforts produces something that
none of us would ever have been able to make alone.
You know, we were never physically designed to fly,
but through human ingenuity, one step at a time,
we found a way to do it.
And so that's one of the reasons that I love OpenCourseWare is,
you know, a lot of people who have taken
big steps on that journey
have now left something behind;
a good foundation for other people to take the next step
to something that's that's bigger and better than ourselves
in a place we could never get by ourselves.
So that openhandedness, when it comes to education
is what drew me here.
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