Transcript

Reaching Escape Velocity: Pro Snowboarder to Rocket Scientist | Andrew Crawford | TEDxBigSky

[Music] [Applause] This is Enceladus, a mysterious frozen moon of Saturn that shoots geysers of water into space from a hidden ocean beneath its icy surface. Scientists agree that this moon is one of the top candidates for finding life in our solar system, intriguing humans worldwide. When I was a boy, my father and I used to watch a space shuttle launch on TV together. And ever since then, I have been fascinated by the wonderment of other celestial bodies. But in order for humans or spacecraft to get to these strange new worlds, it is fundamental to achieve escape velocity. Escape velocity is the minimum velocity required for a spacecraft to break free from the powerful gravitational force of Earth. The Cassini spacecraft, which took that remarkable photo of Enceladus, achieved escape velocity from Earth 20 years ago, and then it traveled for 7 years just to get to Enceladus. By achieving escape velocity, the Cassini spacecraft was able to reveal stunning images and provide new data of Enceladus for scientists here on Earth to ponder. But escape velocity can also serve as a powerful metaphor for human potential. Without defying the odds and striving to overcome the powerful forces that humans perceive as limits or barriers, how can we really know what humans are truly capable of? In today's fast-paced world, there is significant pressure to define your goals early, get the degree, get the job, make the money. But in this pursuit, some of our most grandiose dreams and ideas tend to get dismissed as unrealistic or just fantasies. Instead, if we were encouraged to hone in on our biggest, boldest dreams and passions, to set goals that push the envelope, then it's possible for humanity to unlock hidden potential. The idea that I'd like to propose to all of you today is this. Can each of you attempt to achieve your own escape velocity? Whatever goal that may be that will push you to the breaking point physically, mentally, and spiritually in order to reveal your maximum potential. Now, this idea may not work for everyone, and there will undoubtedly be failed attempts along the way. But regardless of the outcomes, the true reward will be in discovering your hidden talents that will inherently strengthen your character and expose your fire within. I'd like to share a few of my experiences regarding escape velocity with you today and in doing so discuss some tools that I've learned along the way that can hopefully help you achieve your own escape velocities. Well, I was a fiery redhead shot out of a cannon at lightning speed who ran everywhere and kept my parents on high alert. I built my first snowboard when I was 10 years old out of some wood from the garage and cutting up my father's garden hose to make bindings. Sorry, Dad. Uh, soon my snowboarding hobby created delusions of grandeur of becoming a professional snowboarder. I even actually got a few photos published in magazines when I was in high school. But then I joined the legions of other kids going off to college as it was time to enter the real world. But I kept asking myself a burning question. What if I could actually make it as a pro? And soon it manifested into a a challenge, a standoff inside my head. As if a fire was raging deep inside of me, I soon dove into a state of complete obsession. Armed with a thought that I absolutely would not fail, I rode my bike from the school dormatory to the mountain bus stop every day. I snowboarded ferociously, practicing tricks over and over again. And then I rode my bike home in the evenings to attend night classes and symphony practice. It was during this period, however, that I realized I was not a natural and I crashed twice as much as the other riders. Just in order to keep up with those other riders, I had to compensate by using brute force, repetition, and fierce determination. That goal of turning pro that once seemed promising, now it seemed daunting. But the fire within me raged and I wondered if perhaps out of repeated failures I could somehow achieve small victories through repetition. So I did the only thing that made sense, a tool that I'd like to share with you all today that can hopefully help you in your own escape velocities. I made a requirements list of my weaknesses and things I needed to work on. And I essentially created my own requirements document of what I thought was needed to become a pro. I developed a routine, a pure singular focus of the goal and I simply worked one requirement and trick at a time and it pushed me to my breaking point. Literally, I broke bones. I had bloody crashes with years of struggle of almost giving up. But by simply working one trick and one requirement at a time, I finally made the pro team. That's when I took a big breath and realized, okay, I did it. I had actually achieved escape velocity. For the next decade, I traveled the world with the likes of Olympian Shawn White and other heroes that I once looked up to in the magazines. I competed in the X Games. I jumped off cliffs like this one from one end of the earth to the other. I snowboarded with reindeer in Sweden under pink skies. I shredded the magical island of northern Japan, Hkaido, with monkeys in the trees looking down at us as we rode by. Here's a short glimpse of some of my adventures. This was a ridge in Germany that I wanted to hike to able to hit this cliff and it just looked too good to to pass on. So, I hit it. And then it was off to Romania where they had so much snow that um we just shredded the urban environment which was pretty fun. Home sweet home, Montana. No cliffs like Montana. They're the best. And then it was off to Austria to uh launch a cliff underneath the tram tower. That was a lot of fun. Well, my next encounter with Escape Velocity involved less time on the mountain and instead lots of time in the library. After 10 years of pushing my body to the limits and 35 broken bones, I craved mental challenge. I've wondered. That's right. That's all I could crave. After 10 years of just absolute beating my body, I wondered if it was too late to become an engineer. is I loved building things. So, with strong encouragement from my parents, I hung up my boots and I went down to my local school, Flathead Valley Community College, and I enrolled for pre-engineering classes. Back to school at age 31. After my first math class, however, after watching the 18-year-old solve calculus functions on their scientific calculators, I quickly put my pocket Casio calculator back in my backpack. And after class, I found myself hiding in my car with a huge knot in my stomach, wondering if I'd made a big mistake. But with wise advice from my engineering professor at school, FAT, I came back the next day and I enrolled in the lowest level math class to relearn the fundamentals. Once again, I felt that fire burning inside of me, tempting me, pushing me, captivating my thoughts as if challenging me to go the distance to become an engineer. But I still had fear, though, and I knew that this engineering goal was ludicrous, slogging through five plus years of brutal engineering coursework just to hopefully graduate at age 36. And then what? But I recounted that liberating feeling of reaching escape velocity during my snowboarding days. And I wondered what my limitations really were. Why did I feel these limitations? Who, what manifested them? I needed answers to these questions. I decided right then that I was going to dedicate all of my focus and energy into getting through the next 5 years somehow someway. This brings up another good tool that I'd like to share with you all that you can all use in your own escape velocity attempts. and that was to simply write out my fears. And then next to each fear, I wrote each possible outcome. In doing so, I realized that outcomes such as failure did not equal death or broken bones. But the true driver of this ludicrous goal of engineering was the pure insatiable curiosity of what I was capable of. And I had to find out. Can each of you recall if you've ever had that burning feeling or question inside of you wondering whether or not you had what it take for something? Remember that gut-wrenching fear? If not, I challenge each of you to set your own goal of escape velocity and experience that feeling for it is truly eye opening. Well, I did find out what I was capable of the hard way. I found myself barely treading water, trying to stay afloat after sleepless nights of homework. Anxietyridden nerves before tests that was pushing me dangerously close to giving up. Twice I found myself in the car in the parking lot trying to hold back the tears, ready to throw in the towel after only two years of school. But then an unexpected event happens that tends to happen along journeys like these that gave me hope. I saw a flyer for a NASA competition for students to design future Mars rovers. I wondered if by harnessing my passion for space exploration, this could provide the motivation and necessary fuel to get me through the difficult engineering course work that lay ahead of me in school. I decided I wanted to try and design one of those Mars rovers on a computer. Only issue, I knew little of computers, but the challenge was simply too great to resist. So every single day that summer, I went to the school library and I turned my back to the window and I taught myself a computer drawing program. And then I designed this Mars rover and then I wound up winning that damn competition. The next thing I knew, I was sitting in NASA's mission control at Johnson Space Center in Houston alongside the other student winners, transfixed as we got to listen to Jean CR, the legendary flight director of the Apollo program, talked to us about safely returning the Apollo 13 crew back to Earth, as well as taking the first call from Neil Armstrong when he first set foot on the moon. I realized right then and there that this was a key checkpoint for me and that my goal of engineering actually might be attainable. This brings up another good tool that I'd like to share with you that you can use along your own escape velocity attempts. And that is to simply set and recognize go no-go points along your journey that will help guide your course adjusting your trajectory just like a spacecraft. Think of these kind of go no-go points as directional guides that will help guide you along your journey. Well, after my trajectory assist from NASA, I transferred to Montana State University to complete my engineering degree. However, things did not get easier. I just found myself struggling just so hard to maintain a B average. I I also felt though that my trajectory assist from NASA was kind of starting to guide my path naturally towards space and I realized that I just simply needed to combine that with grit and hard work in order to stay the course. So I worked nights on campus at Montana's space science and engineering laboratory helping to build Montana's first satellite herby and then launch it into orbit. I also worked with the Montana Space Grant Consortium, helping to promote the importance of STEM education to other students that were interested in space. And finally, after two rejected applications, I landed an internship with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL. While at JPL, I worked on NASA's deep space network, a huge array of antennas on Earth that help guide and communicate with NASA's spacecraft, including my favorite spacecraft, Cassini, which shot that wonderful photo of Enceladus. The moment that I realized I had achieved escape velocity, was when I got to watch with my parents by my side at JPL the Mars rover Curiosity land on Mars. With the work that I did on the antennas playing a very small but satisfying part in that mission, my school experience showed me that my perceived limits weren't really limits at all. Rather, they were challenges that had to be overcome. With a renewed passion for where my studies may take me, I returned to MSU and finally graduated with honors in mechanical engineering and minored in aerospace. Well, the last example of escape velocity that I'd like to share with you all today in hopes of convincing each of you to set your goals your own goals of escape velocity occurred three years ago when I got a call from X Google's moonshot factory asking if I'd like to come work on a futuristic project. Some former NASA engineers who had worked on the Mars rovers were leading the charge on this new project and I was thrilled at the opportunity. When I arrived at X, it literally felt like I had entered Willy Wonka Land. There was surreal sci-fi projects all around. X was an incredibly inspiring and fast-paced environment. And while I was thrilled to be there, I was also secretly plagued with a fear that I didn't belong. Here I was at one of the world's leading technological incubators, surrounded by geniuses, and I had somehow managed to slip through the cracks. I was nervous. I was scared. And I was totally intimidated. I hit rock bottom. So, I did the only thing that I could as a new Googler, a nooler. I asked for help from senior Googlers. They told me that I was probably suffering from the imposttor syndrome. That's right. I hadn't heard of it either. And it's a feeling that is sometimes, you know, felt by newly hired employees that Google had somehow made a mistake in hiring them, that they had slipped through the cracks and that they would soon be found out. They said the syndrome could be described as a a U-shaped curve with the top of the curve that high feeling of getting hired, like, "Woohoo! I did it. I work at Google." And then the bottom feeling where I was feeling like an imposttor, like holy crap, how did I get here? and then the upward slope of that curve representing climbing your way back out through hard work to hopefully get confidence again. They told me that most people in time could recover from the syndrome with a feeling of confidence and belonging within the organization. I decided I needed to reframe my goal. So, I got on my whiteboard at home and I drew a big X on the bottom where I was now feeling like an impostor. Then, I drew a star up here of where I needed to get. Then I simply just drew hash marks up the curve like rungs of a ladder with each rung listing different things that I needed to work on. By allowing myself to set small victories and instead just tackle one little thing and one problem of mine at a time instead of the big picture, I was slowly able to gain confidence. And then once again, the escape velocity kind of started to manifest and guide itself naturally. That futuristic project that I spoke of, that was Google's self-driving car. Now, it's become big enough to become its own company called Whimo alongside Google. Because I simply set small goals, I was able to simply check off one at a time, I now get to work on, test, and ride in self-driving cars every single day, helping to lead the charge into the future with a feeling of confidence and belonging within the organization. I'd like to challenge you with one final thought tonight. And that is this. For each of you, to set your own goal of escape velocity, whatever that may be, that will push you to the breaking point physically, mentally, and spiritually in order to reveal your maximum potential. Thank you. [Applause] [Music]