Question: Was there anything that you weren't prepared for?

Andrea Boyd answered on 17 Jun 2016:

At work, not really – because we are trained to react and adapt to whatever comes our way so that’s just what engineering is: solving unknown problems. You don’t know the answer but you know you can figure it out.

What I was unprepared for was that outside of work, in Australia especially and also around Europe, I was suddenly called on to do public talks, go on TV/radio, try to assist non-engineers to understand our work in space and worst of all talk to politicians to tell them why space was so worth it. I’d never given speeches before in my life and one week even had to help represent Australia (my whole country!!) and give talks 7 days in a row in front of giant audiences at this international space thing. After that week I retreated to hide behind my computer, write code at work and play video games and basketball with my best friend for some days of quiet! It wasn’t just technology anymore – it was all these social skills that I didn’t naturally have. Learning to be less shy in public was a big effort that I was not expecting to have to prepare for.