It is best to cultivate knowledge, skill and passion at an early age. And that is what SpaceX did. While it is known that hundreds of college students have entered the premises of SpaceX as interns, it is not always seen that a handful of high school students slipped through.
A few high school students received the same opportunity that the college interns did, cites Daily Breeze. Interns are known to work long hours and crunch over engineering projects. These high school students did something similar. A few teenagers from Hawthorne's own three local high schools were chosen to work beside the world's greatest rocket engineering minds. Kids at Space Exploration Technologies Corp.'s aren't building rockets but they are stationed at the heart of the Hawthorne site.
These teenagers are tasked to troubleshoot computer issues and maintain work stations. Lilian Haney's goal was to partner with Hawthorne's own high schools. Haney is the community outreach manager and she explains that the process to apply is no different from their internship process.
Da Vinci, Hawthorne Math & Science Academy, and Hawthorne High School were the three schools chosen by SpaceX to participate each year. Teachers from each school recommends their best engineering and science students to join.
The activity is considered to be a great experience to expose these kids at an early age. Early expectation setting is the key if they wish to build a career and future with SpaceX. These kids may also have their own ideas on how to live on Mars.
A student like Vincent Ornelas, a new graduate of Da Vinci, describes his experience. "I find it amazing that humans can send stuff to space and how far we've come," says Ornelas. He recalls that his SpaceX internship started out with building robots but he learned from the SpaceX engineers that success means working hard.
Are you a high school student and interested in interning at SpaceX? Tell us how you can contribute.
Check out these interns at SpaceX below and follow their experiences:
