WEBVTT FILE

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<click> I'm Bonnie Seaton, I
work on the James Webbs

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Space Telescope, and I am the
Deputy

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Grounds Segment and Operations
Manager here at NASA.

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Music

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Music

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Working at NASA is bigger, I
think than any dream I could of
had.

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and that's why its something I
didn't originally aspire

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to. So it's a

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wonderful place to work and its
more than I would of ever
thought

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and I had been here like 5
years and I got a phone call.

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It was a gentleman, he was
calling from somewhere in the

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mid west. and I didn't know who
he ment to get but

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he got me. So and I always
answering the phone

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"this is Bonnie Seaton at the
NASA Goddard Space Flight
Center.

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"the NASA?" i was like yeah.

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"the NASA where there's
Astronauts", I was like

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Well we don't have Astronauts
here, but yes this is that NASA

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"WOW, you guys are amazing"

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"I can't believe I'm talking to
somebody from NASA"

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and its just that sense of joy

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and amazement, is something
that I

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had when I first started
working here, and I tell you
the truth

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it never leaves. You just
always have

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events through out your career,
that instantly

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bring back that feeling. When I
was growing up, I didn't have

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a lot of career models for
women. There

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weren't a lot of diversity of
jobs that either men or

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women were doing at that time
and in that place

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in the city. So, it was very
much of a factory, blue collar

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type of environment. So, what I
saw for women like

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teachers, nurses, homemakers
you know that like of

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thing. So I decided

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pretty early, I wanted to be a
nurse. Started college

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State University of New York at
Buffalo. I went through

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3 years of classes there. i
wanted to be a nurse.

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Finished up my junior year

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I don't want to be a nurse.
(Laughing)

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So I realized that it wasn't
for me.

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Personal makeup than what I
had, so my patients were crying
and I

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was crying. I thought, this is
not

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how you can spend your life and
spend your career, so I

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finally went back to school.
Got talked into taking my first

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computer science class,
computer science became my major

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So I completed my bachelors
degree, then I started working

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in industry for a few months,
then came here to NASA

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When i first started here, for
the 9 to 10 years of my

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career, I was working for a
gentleman named Bill Kelly.

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Not long after I finished my
professional intern 2,

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Bill was giving me different

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assignments and then he would
say, "well

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we need to have a meeting, put
a team together and have a
meeting about

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what ever this particular
technical

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subject was. He would run the
meeting and then after a couple
of weeks

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he'd ask me to fill in, take
care of the meeting, because he
had something else to do.

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and then that would happen more
and more, then all of sudden
I'm running

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the meeting and he would the
same thing with like task

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monitoring assignments for
other little jobs he would ask
me like

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you write the first draft, and
then I'll take it from there.

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and what you didn't realize or
I didn't realized at the time

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is that's how he was training
me and

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teaching me how to do these
things, and then all of sudden

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I turned around and I was
actually task monitor for the
whole effort

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and I would look here and it
was like, when did this happen?
and it was

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just a gradual very subtle way
he had

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of training, that you didn't
realize you were taking on

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more and more stuff, and all of
sudden

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that was it and you were
managing the effort. My parents

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had been the biggest influence
on my life and I

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think my mom

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was a great influnece, she
instilled

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a belief that I was to go to
college, and

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you k now we didn't have money
for school, we didn't have
money for college.

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you know we're in an
environment where a lot of
people didn't go to college

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but I never doubted that I
would. and I never

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doubted I would have a career.
I wanted more than

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and every day kind of job. I
wanted

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a career take me places and
give me opportunities

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and some how my mother gave me
that, without direct

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conversation about it, just by
believing in me

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and she so sure that's why my
future

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would take me. That I believed
it too.

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There's actually a couple of
things that I'd like to
recommend

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for college age women. I
strongly believe in STEM careers

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Science, Technology,
Engineering, and Math and I
think they can give you

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a great future, but I also
think there's

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wide diversity of career fields.

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under the umbrella of STEM

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I really recommend you try a
variety of topics, take
different

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classes, maybe even convince
yourself

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to take something that, at
first blush,

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might not be something that you
really think

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The other thing I recommend is

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pay a lot of attention to your
communication

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skills, because no matter what
career you're going to take

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you have to be able to
communicate your ideas both

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in writing or talking orally

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communicating your skills. I
think those are the, probably
the two

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biggest pieces of advice

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that I would give...

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Music

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Music

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Music

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Music