Today is May 31 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “How often do you allow yourself to be limited by other people’s imaginations?”
As the first African-American woman to travel in space, Mae Carol Jemison believed that she would “never be limited by other people’s limited imaginations.” Jemison was born in Decatur, Alabama, on October 17, 1956 and the family moved to Chicago, Illinois, when Jemison was three years old, to take advantage of the better educational and employment opportunities there.
Jemison says that as a young girl growing up in Chicago she always assumed she would get into space.
Jemison's parents were very supportive of her interest in science, while her teachers were not.
According to Jamison "In kindergarten, my teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I told her a scientist…she said, 'Don't you mean a nurse?' Now, there's nothing wrong with being a nurse, but that's not what I wanted to be….I always knew I wanted to explore. At the time of the Apollo airing, everybody was thrilled about space, but I remember being irritated that there were no women astronauts. People tried to explain that to me, and I did not buy it." As she had been in high school, Jemison was very involved in extracurricular activities at Stanford, including dance and theater productions.
After she obtained her M.D. in 1981, Jemison interned at Los Angeles County/University of Southern California Medical Center and later worked as a general practitioner. For the next two and a half years, she was the area Peace Corps medical officer for Sierra Leone and Liberia. In October 1985 Jemison made a career change and decided to follow a dream she had nurtured for a long time and applied for admission to NASA's astronaut training program.
The Challenger disaster of January 1986 delayed the selection process, but when she reapplied a year later, Jemison was one of the 15 candidates chosen from a field of about 2,000.
She would eventually become the first African-American woman to travel in space when she went into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on September 12, 1992.
Jamison did not allow herself to be limited by other people’s imaginations. Do you?