Everybody just wants to know, what’s your story, how did you get to NASA? How did a 26-year-old black girl get a Ph.D. in something like aerospace en… - Wendy Okolo

But instead, I basically kind of took a pay cut for higher learning. But with that pay cut and all of these fellowships, I was able to keep my head above water and focus on learning. Focus on my Ph.D. program.

Now, generally, you do have the expectations you set for yourself. To what extent does imposter syndrome manifests with you and it varies for different people. How I handle it is I try to be super, overly diligent with everything, I have to know everything. I have to start from scratch; I have to understand it. And it’s very imperative; it’s important for me that my achievements are attributed to my capabilities and not simply because I am a Woman of Color in this field. It has to be my technical expertise that has brought me here or taken me there.

There’s no question. And what the Honors College did for me, was it positioned me to have a solid foundation in my course work and my academics, particularly the first few classes that I took that were Honors classes, really helped me – I would say, that they definitely helped me transition to the aerospace engineering program versus coming fresh out of high school and Nigeria because the classes were intimate and provided an opportunity for me to learn with other high-achieving students.