So maybe being 35 it might be time for me to start thinking about growing up.

I don’t mean getting stodgy or conservative or saying things like, “because we have always done it that way” but I mean giving up some of the tactics that I honed at a young age to survive the wilds of Junior High that might not be so appropriate anymore.  You see in Junior High I was picked on mercilessly by some of the guys (who my teachers assured me were only doing it because they were threatened by me- fat lot of consolation that was when I would go home crying every day). My survival strategy became to be as cool as possible. Luckily I had an older sister who through osmosis I could learn from and start to take on the ways of the cool rebel kids. I shaved the sides and back of my hair, wore dark lipstick and high top skater shoes.

It has served me well over the years. Although I took all honors and AP classes in high school, I escaped nerdom, played sports, and once I hit 9th grade never got picked on again. In college, I had fun, did what I wanted and took on my career fearlessly. I was not usually intimidated by a room full of senior engineers once I got to NASA because, hey, they were not nearly as cool as me. Heck I even created a whole space holiday around being cool.

I forgot that I had made it all up. I started to think that I was just born cool.

But recently I have begun to see the toll having to be cooler than everyone is taking. I noticed that I have had little time for those who weren’t as cool as me and that ends up being exclusionary and hurtful. Ironically probably as hurtful as those boys were to me. I realized that I am cutting out whole groups of people I could learn from and work with. So maybe its time to stop playing that game, maybe I don’t need to be “shields-up” all the time against an attack that was called off 20 years ago. Maybe it’s ok to just be normal, just one among equals, to listen and to make time for everyone- just like my dad does. I mean that would be practicing what I preach. Didn’t I say in my TEDxNASA talk that when we grow up and become a galactic civilization we will get back that connection with everyone and everything that we had when we were kids? Maybe I can do my part for the galaxy by doing my own growing up first and be the change I want to see in the Universe.