Hi, I'm Jessi Horelica, and I'm a NASA engineer.
Today I've come back to the place where I was inspired to become an engineer
to see if I can get students excited about maybe becoming an engineer, too.
What do you think an engineer does?
Well, really create stuff I guess.
Works on building.
I think is just mostly about math and a lot of building around it all.
So what do you think an engineer does all day?
I think they build all day.
Yep, they build all day. They design things.
So I like to think of an engineer as someone who solves puzzles for a living.
Would that be so cool? Yeah.
They have to program things that along with coding.
Is there something that you might want to do when you grow up.
To be like a vet.
Or an engineer?
Do you think that would be really cool building stuff for a living?
Yeah.
So I like to think of engineers as building things to make the world
a better place.
Does that sound like something you might be interested in? Yeah.
What do you think an engineer looks like?
Oh, like it has a yellow helmet.
I like a little jacket it has tools inside its pocket.
They have a helmet.
Looks young.
Like some safety glasses.
They wear black.
They have a jacket, but it's short sleeved.
And then they would have some excellent shoes.
Ah. They can
look like anyone.
Anyone. Yeah, exactly.
I'm actually an engineer.
Did you know that? Yeah.
Oh, okay. Well, awesome.
So everything you see the plane over there, that
building engineers designed and built those things.
Isn't that so cool?
What's your favorite thing that you have ever built?
A trampoline.
A trampoline? Wow.
My favorite thing to build is mini airplanes.
Or origami.
What is your favorite NASA program?
I think I would say Artemis or maybe the Mars mission.
What we're going to do with Artemis
is we're going to send humans back to the moon and then onto Mars.
Is that something you might want to do?
Yeah.
We could use so many more engineers.
You should totally become an engineer.
How old are you? Six.
So you're just about the age that I was.
And when I took a tour of Space Center
Houston, I knew that I wanted to become an engineer.
So hopefully you'll learn about some really cool stuff today
that might inspire you to become an engineer.
Do you think that would be cool?
Super cool, Super cool.
It's never too early to introduce a student in your life to engineering.
Go to stem.nasa.gov to find fun ways
to spark an interest today.