Students from Dresden, Wallaceburg and all across the Lambton-Kent District School Board had the opportunity on Wednesday to listen, learn and be motivated by the first Canadian to walk in space.
Retired astronaut Col. Chris Hadfield provided the keynote address at the Specialist High Skills Major Conference, held in Hadfield’s hometown of Sarnia.
Set a goal, follow your dreams
Hadfield told the hundreds of students at the Sarnia Sports & Entertainment Centre about his long journey to becoming an astronaut, the hard work and dedication it took to realize his dream and an assortment of entertaining stories about his time in space.
“A rocket ship is just 10,000 inventions bolted together… there is no magic, there is not higher purpose of why it has to look that way,” Hadfield said during his speech.
“When you step out of the crew bus and you walk and look up at it, that is what I looked at, all that human invention. A whole bunch of specialists, a whole bunch of people with an interesting idea and each of them had invented one piece of it and somebody realized that if we can put all these ideas together it can take us to a place… we can do something with this that otherwise would be impossible.”
“You get in the elevator, you get up about 20 stories, then you get on your hands and knees and crawl into the space ship and worm your way around. We launch lying on our backs, in super tight harnesses strapped in and the clock ticks down, they close up the hatch and you are alone in the cockpit with your other crew members…. what do you think about? What does any of us think about as the clock is ticking down in its final minutes, to something really important. What astronauts think about is, ‘what is going to go wrong and how am I going to react to it.’ Things always go wrong, that’s normal. So what’s going to go wrong and am I ready for it. What is it going to look like and how am I going to react.”
“Right here on stage right now, what could go wrong. The lights might burn out, no big deal we’ve got ambient light. This microphone might quit, that’s okay we’ve got three backup microphones. The slides might stop, who cares we can keep talking. Everything in life is like that. What is it that you’re going to do, what is going to go wrong and what have you done to prepare for that to go wrong. When you’re lying on your back in your spaceship, that’s what you’re thinking about.”
Do what you love, love what you do
Hadfield said he decided when he was nine-years-old living in Sarnia that he wanted to be an astronaut.
He then proceeded to dedicate his life to learning and striving towards becoming just that.
Hadfield proceeded to encourage the Lambton-Kent District School Board students to follow their dreams as well… and he provided them an exercise to practice themselves.
“Whenever you go into a bookstore, I would bet you don’t always go to every single section exactly the same,” Hadfield said.
“There is probably parts of the bookstore that you normally go to, whatever it is that is interesting to you. If the two of us were next to each other and we walked into a bookstore, within 30 seconds or so I would go off, and you would go off and what you are doing is going to the place that you like, the places that are interesting to you.”
“What I recommend is, after you’ve been to a bookstore twice, notice where you went because that is sort of an indicator of what you’re actually interested in. Where your nature lies, where your heart is.
Hadfield recommended to look at the sections that you visited in the bookstore, and look into what careers could stem from those interests.
“If my life went perfectly, what could I be doing in those areas that interest me,” he said.
“The key is when you are a kid… dreaming about life it is really nice to set yourself some sort of distant goals of where you want this life you live to lead you because then it makes it easier to decide what to do next. If you have that goal, then it makes it a little easier to decide what to do this weekend… what books should I read, what skills don’t I have to become what I’m dreaming of.”
Hadfield said for him, he wanted to walk on the moon.
“Canada didn’t have astronauts, they didn’t even have a space agency but I thought if I was going to be an astronaut someday, what should I do,” he said.
“So, I read books about it… I knew astronauts flew in space, so I learned to fly. I can do that, so I joined the Air Cadets and I learned to fly. I went to school, I learned to scuba dive, learned to speak other languages. I tried to constantly increase my skills so that someday maybe, somebody would pick me to be an astronaut. Amazingly enough, I flew in space three times and was even the Commander of the world space ship and spent half a year off the planet, on board the International Space Station.”
Hadfield added: “I think it’s an important personal thing to go through, a definition of perfection, an impossible perfection in your life.”
Specialist High Skills Major program
The Specialist High Skills Major program provides students in Grades 11 and 12 in the Lambton-Kent District School Board with the opportunity to focus their secondary school studies on a particular sector of interest.
These sectors range from Agriculture to Arts and Culture and from Horticulture to Health and Wellness.
In addition to providing in-class training, the mandate of the SHSM Program is to also provide students with hands on workshops, training, and learning opportunities that will assist in preparing them for their chosen post secondary area of interest.
To address this mandate, the Lambton Kent District School Board hosted Wednesday’s conference in Sarnia.
The conference was designed to allow students to receive sector-specific instruction from industry experts, as well as to be inspired by the keynote address.
– Photo credit: Aaron Hall
