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Welcome to Star Compass!
What’s inside this week:
🧑🚀 This Week’s Mission: What comes after landing?
🌌 This Week in Space: Three things worth checking out this week .
🚀 Ask a Rocket Scientist: How do I find my why?
🔭 Next Step: Start the next epoch.
THIS WEEK’S MISSION
What comes after landing?
After landing your first job, everyone is eager to take the first step.
The Apollo 11 astronauts had one of the most exciting days humans have ever had when they landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC, 4:17 PM ET. After a more challenging landing than planned that ended with only 25-50 seconds of fuel left, Neil Armstrong announced their arrival with “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”
The schedule for the mission called for astronauts to follow the landing with a five-hour sleep period, but they chose to begin preparations for the moon walk (formerly known as an extravehicular activity or EVA) early. They couldn’t wait to take the first step.
When we complete all the steps covered in the previous 14 issues of the Star Compass newsletter, and land our first job, we are often eager to take the first professional step. But before we do, it is time for an operating system upgrade because the rules change when you graduate.
Let’s wrap up this phase of the Star Compass journey by discussing how things change and how we adjust.
After enjoying some of the most freedom you may ever have, we expect transitioning to adulting to increase our freedom. Instead, it is like a computer operating system upgrade where the manual is written in a language we don’t know, and you are expected to figure it out as soon as you start. Here are some of the challenges you will face:
Shifting to professional relationships from college friendships is a big adjustment. Whether due to different majors or landing at different employers, your relationships will change when you start your next job. Building relationships with coworkers is different than meeting people in the dorms.
Current friends require more than a walk down the hall or across campus to meet up. Proximity will change, and more planning is required. If you don’t put in the effort, you may lose them after graduation.
Loneliness can follow. As important as your network was for helping you find a job, it often can be as valuable in helping you start a new one. By leveraging mentors, you can learn how to navigate a work environment and build a community.
Skipping work is not like skipping class. Attendance is not optional, and it is important to show up early and often when starting a new job.
Since most employers have a set work schedule and meeting timing is often determined by senior colleagues, you don’t usually set your own hours and get to take a break when you feel like it. However, you should learn time blocking to plan focus time. We will cover this in greater detail in a future issue.
No Winter and Spring Break will leave you missing these built-in breaks. While in the United States, it is common for professionals not to use their vacation, it is important to not fall into this trap. You need to be strategic in planning for times to recharge without an academic calendar forcing it.
Regular feedback will not come naturally but needs to be requested. You expect to get grades on your homework and exams to tell you how you are doing in a class, but in the professional world, feedback will come less often and won’t correspond to letter grades. You need to learn to seek out feedback to improve and value it as a gift when it is given.
No more sweatpants as your primary daily wardrobe. The dress code changes. Even at the most casual of casual Fridays, it is unlikely the sweatpants you wore so often in college will make the acceptability cut. Occasionally, if you work from home, a good camera angle will allow them to be worn during working hours.
Less varied learning opportunities are a bigger adjustment than you may realize. You should strive to continue to learn as much as you can when starting your new job, but it may not be as easy as it was in school. The topics will be narrower. You may not have enjoyed the variety of your general education classes, but you will not realize what lessons you learned outside your major. Create time to get out of your professionally focused bubble to keep learning, as some of the most useful solutions come from applying something from another area to the problem you are solving.
Finding mentors may be one of the biggest challenges you will face. In college, you had access to professors who are happy to provide advice as a part of their job. In the professional world, it takes finding someone who will give time freely, and it is likely less than what your professor could offer. If you find a good mentor in the real world, value them, because they are hard to find.
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THIS WEEK IN SPACE
📡 OPPORTUNITY: A recurring theme in this space is internship opportunities because the Fall is the best time to pursue them, with those waiting until Spring being too late. The latest is the Spring NASA Pathways opportunity. NASA strategically hires Pathways interns based on long-term potential, with the opportunity for multi-semester opportunities that offer you a direct pipeline after graduation and prepare you for a NASA career. Spring 2027 Pathways Internship applications open on September 21, 2026, and close on September 25, 2026. Spring 2027 internships will begin January 25, 2027.
📚RESOURCE: Oftentimes your first goal when you graduate is simply to find a job. But I encourage you to think bigger. What is your Moonshot? Originally a reference to President John F. Kennedy calling for us to land on the Moon when we didn’t even know if it could be done, it has been broadened to mean any kind of bold, ambitious project with no immediate certainty of success. Fortunately, NASA astronaut Mike Massimino has written a book that can help you get there called appropriately, Moonshot: A NASA Astronaut’s Guide to Achieving the Impossible. #ad
🌎 COMMUNITY: More than just a scholarship, the Brooke Owens Fellows, or “Brookies” as they are known informally, are a community of alumni and current participants that help exceptional undergraduate women and gender-minority students pursue their future in aerospace and navigate their careers. Enjoying a decade of success since their founding by Lori Garver, Cassie Lee, and Will Pomerantz, applications are open until October 4, with two information sessions remaining: Saturday, September 19th, 12 pm EDT, and Monday, September 28th, 10 pm EDT.
ASK A ROCKET SCIENTIST
How do I find my why?
- Several of my CU students
I started my Star Compass newsletter (add the link) with the first issue discussing Simon Sinek’s Start with Why. But a common follow-up question I get from students I teach this material to is how to find it. Fortunately, Simon must have received this question a lot as well because he has a second book entitled Find Your Why. It provides useful tools that both individuals and teams can use to discover their why that I have used with companies and in the classroom.
Got a question about navigating your aerospace career? Reply and ask. I’ll answer the best ones right here.
THE NEXT STEP
An epoch is defined as an event or time marked by an event that begins a new period or development.
I have used epochs to define career stages that I have built my editorial calendar around. This issue completes Epoch 1: LAUNCH, focused on finding opportunities in the aerospace industry. The next issue will start Epoch 2: ACCELERATE, which focuses on the individual contributor career stage. Epoch 3: NAVIGATE will focus on the transition to becoming a team leader. Finally, Epoch 4: ORBIT will focus on the big picture of leading at scale and building a legacy.
I hope you have enjoyed the journey so far and continue to serve as crew as we continue this journey together.
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