Spring/Summer 2011
Astronaut Hernandez encouraged students to continue on with tough engineering and math courses by telling stories of his upbringing as a farm worker in central California. Here are excerpts of the speech he gave at the 2010 Student Leadership Conference sponsored by PG&E. To watch the full speech go to MESA’s YouTube channel: youtube.com/user/MesaCA1
"I come from a typical migrant farm working
family. Parents had a third grade education . . .
Like a lot of farm working families . . . summer
vacations meant seven days a week in the fields.
Everyday after work as we got into the back
seat of the car . . . my father would ask, ‘How
do you feel?’ Of course we would say, ‘we’re
tired, sweaty, dirty.’ He’d say ‘Good. Remember
this feeling because I’m not going to force you
to go to school. I’m not going to force you to
study. I’m not going to force you to get good
grades. But if you don’t this is what awaits.'
" It’s very important what MESA is doing to
entice (students) and support them to stay in
(science, technology, engineering and math)
fields. Technology is what’s going to keep this
country being the great country it is today. It
behooves us to engage all segments of society in
terms of giving them an opportunity to pursue
a career in STEM.
"I applaud the efforts of companies like PG&E that step up to the plate and write those checks so MESA can continue doing what it’s doing, all the great things that it’s doing. Because you know, what? I’m a product of MESA. I was a MESA student. I was sitting in the same places you guys are sitting right now. So you see, good products come out of MESA.”
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