Godspeed: 1962 or 2017?

            After November 8^th, there was a shift in our country. The person who was elected President of the United States was someone no one expected to win, and Americans felt a sense of fear and uncertainty as to what the next four years would be like – not only for themselves and their families, but also for the world. As the winter holidays ended and the New Year began, the mood in DC was low (as I’m sure it was in a multitude of other places throughout the nation) as January 20^th, Inauguration Day, quickly approached.

            The week leading up to the Inauguration, our group was invited, along with the OSU DC Alumni Club, Black Alumni Society and John Glenn College, to attend a screening of the movie, Hidden Figures. The movie depicts a true and previously unknown story about three female African American mathematicians, who brilliantly contributed to the launch of NASA’s first successful space missions (including the late Senator John Glenn’s!) during the early 1960s. This movie can obviously be seen and appreciated at any time, but it was the timing of our viewing in particular that made watching it so special.

            Hidden Figures was a movie that made me proud of America. It told a story of the difficulties that these people faced in their careers at NASA as not only women of color, but as women of color working in the aerospace engineering “all boys club” of America. We watched this movie during a time when I was feeling discouraged, pessimistic, and heartbroken. It’s quite incredible that the story that this film told gave me the ability to feel hopeful going into the upcoming week.

Writing this piece one month later, I have some confidence that this feeling will continue to last… for throughout my time in WAIP, as well as the next several years. But as we all know, time will only tell: so “Godspeed” to us all.