Second Chances: Cooperative Education

I had interviewed for cooperative education positions in the spring of my freshman year of college, with no luck. One of the difficulties I discussed seemed to be proving my interest in aerospace on the resume, as an electrical engineering major.

So in the fall of my Sophomore year, I made a few changes to my co-op resume.  I added the Russian language I had begun to study.

Semi-random

My mom always loved to watch Figure Skating competitions on TV.  It seems strange, because I've only ever worn ice skates twice in my life, both the same winter.  I guess Mom loved the artistry, the music and the motions.

I don't even remember how many figure skating competitions we watched when I was growing up.  I knew a lot of the skaters's names.

Learning Russian

Over the summer between my freshman and sophomore year at college, I continued reading books from the space history section of the local library.  One of the books that I found, was Deke!, the autobiography of D.K. Slayton, one of the Mercury 7 astronauts, who flew on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission.  As part of the project, he had to learn to speak Russian, at 40-something years old.

Russian is a Slavic language, very different from English. Also, our brains are wired to learn languages when we're young.  It's still possible to learn new languages into adulthood, but adults tend to struggle more.  So, Deke wrote about his struggles to learn Russian.

I had always intended to study more languages than just Spanish.  Spanish was simply the first language I had access to.  Had I stayed at Mercy High School for four years, I was thinking of taking beginner French.  I wanted to learn German, Russian, Arabic...