Susan Martinez's Journey in STEM The Ups and Downs

BY SOPHIA TANG

As Martinez stood there motionless, silent tears came pouring out. She was speechless, and she didn’t care about her now-ruined makeup and the tears that streamed down her face, as her heart was so touched by this young girl’s statement.

In that moment, she realized that this would become a lasting memory, and she reflects later, “I’ll never, never forget this, even when I’m 80 years old.” But the journey to become such an empowering role model in engineering was not without its challenges.

Martinez and her twin sister were home-schooled throughout their childhoods, and their engineering mindsets were actually jump-started by their mechanic father, who taught them how to change car tires and oil and fix household items.

Martinez expresses her deep gratitude towards her father’s guidance and unwavering support, saying, “He’s always been a huge supporter, and he loves space. He is a huge reason I am an engineer.”

After finishing her K-12 education, Martinez decided to enroll in community college, and while registering for her first semester of classes, she eagerly opted to attend an 8 AM history class. Being homeschooled for her entire life, Martinez was not accustomed to early-morning classes after the very first lecture, she sat in the car with her sister and cried, realizing how scared she was for the drastic change from homeschooling to public school. Motivated by the difficulty of the course, Martinez started “studying 24/7;” she exhibited academic excellence and received an outstanding GPA, ending with all A’s besides her only B in her very first history class.

After two years of community college, Martinez’s college advisor found a pamphlet for an aerospace program called NCAS that she decided to apply for. The pamphlet, it turns out, was from the 1990s and extremely outdated, so she ended up applying for and was accepted into a NASA internship program instead. Pleasantly surprised by this urn of events and the opportunity to participate in this highly-coveted internship even without taking any engineering classes, she accepted the offer. Martinez muses, “I really do attribute NCAS to the reason I came to NASA because that’s what I had applied to, and I have never even thought to apply to a NASA internship before she gave me that pamphlet.”

In 2017, Martinez transferred to the University of Kentucky for its proximity to the NASA internship. In her first semester at UK, she excelled academically. Her second semester, on the other hand, was more difficult. She received her first C’s and D’s; her semester GPA was around a 2.0.

Martinez recognized that she needed a break from school, so instead of taking university classes, she pursued her NASA internship full-time through the entire spring semester of 2018 That spring, her coworker shared some insightful advice that Martinez subsequently carried with her for years: she should reset once in a while, as a reset can greatly benefit her mental health

After her semester-long break, the newly refocused and recentered Martinez was able to return to UK for her senior year, maintain a high semester GPA, and land a full-time job at NASA

During her time at university, Martinez couldn’t help but notice the skewed gender ratio in her classes She was one of 33 women in a class of over 400, and she was one of only two women in her senior design group The ratio made it difficult for Martinez to perform well in her classes: “I had this pressure on myself that I had to be better that I had to be the best. Always.” Martinez felt pressured to be the best among the women as well as the men she felt as if there was internal, unspoken academic rivalry between all the women. For instance, Martinez felt as if one of the women in her engineering classes covertly despised her for landing the NASA internship, and this secret feud lasted for almost two years. But one day, the woman approached her to express her support for Martinez’s accomplishments, and they began chatting about NASA merchandise. They became good friends over the next few weeks. That bond lasted, and now that woman is Martinez’s best friend she was even a bridesmaid at Martinez’s wedding.

Eventually, Martinez grew to recognize that women in STEM are typically supportive of each other and are all fighting for the same thing: “[we’re] fighting for each other.” Martinez emphasizes the importance of “banding together” and finding other women who will endlessly support you, as it can make a huge difference in your mentality and attitude towards education and work.

With this realization, Martinez became a strong advocate for women in STEM She started using her Instagram account (@AdAstraSu) to show other girls that STEM is within reach for them and that they shouldn’t be afraid of pursuing work in male-dominated fields She also uses it as an outlet for when she’s facing hurdles in her personal life, and has also met many of her lifelong friends through this platform, finding that the aerospace community on social media can be an encouraging and supportive space

Tough situations at school and work discouraged her from continuing to work in engineering, but by exercising her creativity and receiving support from the Instagram community, she was able to work through the self-esteem issues that she was combatting Martinez reflects upon her new positive mindset: “I don't have to feel this way I can dress the way that I want to make myself feel confident I’m going to talk about engineering projects to make myself feel smarter, and I’m doing these things to encourage others and perpetuate this idea of what I want myself to be more like, and it has worked ” By adopting a positive outlook on a negative situation, she alleviated her “personality crisis” and changed her mindset, reinforcing her identity as a woman in engineering

Despite her new creative outlet, working full-time at NASA still proved to be difficult. Martinez was working in flight control, which was exciting but also extremely complicated and stressful. She never properly adjusted to the tight sleep schedule, and she began to burn out; she was undereating, undersleeping, and only focusing on work. She wasn’t herself anymore, and she wasn’t able to function as a person. Although she was in a bad mental state and often thought about quitting, there were still numerous external pressures, from both peers and the job itself, cautioning her against it All this negative feedback caused Martinez to doubt the validity of her own emotions she began to think that it was her fault that she felt weak and unhappy She began asking herself questions like “Why am I not happy? Why didn’t this work for me?”

After much deliberation, Martinez decided to follow her previous co-worker’s advice and trust herself she quit her job at NASA She knew that leaving was the right decision for her; it would allow her a break for her mental health It took a great deal of willpower and determination to leave the civil servant occupation at NASA, but Martinez is appreciative of herself for going through with this decision: “I am most proud of myself for having enough strength to leave NASA when I knew it was not the best for my mental health. It’s not necessarily an achievement, but it is truly the best thing I could have done for myself.”

During Martinez’s time off, she decided to take initiative to alleviate the lack of fashionable clothing options for women in STEM by creating her own clothing line, AdAstraSu. “Because I love fashion, I kinda took it upon myself to make a non-cringey clothing line for women in STEM,” Martinez comments. Her clothing line includes cozy hoodies and trendy graphic tees. She has also designed mugs, notebooks, and tote bags. Her designs often have positive and engaging messages like “Space is my happy place” and “You belong in space ” . Martinez’s clothing line is truly “ space fashion that is out of this world.”

A few months into her break from work, Martinez found a new job as a Payload Developer at Blue Origin, where she is currently working. At Blue Origin, Martinez is developing new payload technology for low-earth orbit by creating cargo to be delivered to the orbital reef for research in space. She builds everything from scratch from the surrounding container to the items inside, she is involved in the entire engineering process. “The thing I like about my current role in STEM and engineering is actually the biggest challenge: we ’ re inventing stuff from the ground up, working with new technology,” she explains. She enjoys working on the groundbreaking edge of science, designing new technology to be used in the future. As an ISS flight controller at NASA, she had been controlling the relatively old technology that the ISS was built with, but at her job at Blue Origin, she is able to innovate new technology that will be used in the following decades. She has had the opportunity to see how technology has matured in space engineering. Transitioning to work in the private sector was a change, but Martinez is thriving in the fast-paced workflow, glad that she can work with novel technologies.

Now, with her new job at Blue Origin, she has a healthy balance between her work life and personal life. She’s spending more time with her husband and their dog, and she’s able to further explore her hobbies, like cooking, hiking, traveling, and making content for her Instagram.

Everyday, Martinez wakes up and tells herself, “It’s so important to be yourself because no one else will be,” and she hopes to inspire more girls to do the same.