COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho — Former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent nearly a year in space, visited students in Coeur d’Alene on Thursday morning. He shared his experiences and urged the students to stay in school and keep learning.
Kelly has flown four missions to space. He told students he was not a top student, and he began pushing toward his goals only after he improved his grades.
“I felt like if I could do better in school, I could you know maybe fly airplanes in the navy and become an astronaut someday,” Kelly said.
“Once I got over that initial step of figuring out how to be a better student, the path to me flying in space was a bunch of much more manageable steps,” Kelly said.
Allison Redka, a junior at CDA High School, said his story gave her encouragement. “I mean It kind of gave me a little bit of hope because I don’t exactly have a 4.0 GPA,” Redka said.
Kelly encouraged students to put down their screens. He said his own source of inspiration came from the pages of a book. Beyond reading, he urged students to take risks.
“Often times young people say to me well I’m not going to do that because I might fail…well how are you going to know if you’re capable of that unless you take the risk of failing?” Kelly said.
“I’ve learned so much more in my life when I took chances and I failed then I did from succeeding the first time or it being easy,” Kelly said.
High school students wrote questions for Kelly ahead of the visit. Some asked about the feeling of zero gravity and about showering in space. Others wondered whether their dreams of space exploration were too big.
Kelly answered that question directly.
“That’s what dreams are. They need to be big. If you don’t have big dreams, you don’t have big successes,” Kelly said.
Redka said Kelly’s answer about seeing Earth from space stuck with her.
“When you’re up in space, you don’t really see the political borders, you just see the continents and thats all you’re seeing is that all of us are human and we’re all just in this big world together going through it,” Redka said.
Kelly will also deliver the 20th Annual North Idaho Distinguished Humanities Lecture tonight.
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