I didn't really decide that I wanted to be an astronaut for sure until the end of college.
When the space shuttle's engines cut off, and you're finally in space, in orbit, weightless... I remember unstrapping from my seat, floating over to the window, and that's when I got my first view of Earth. Just a spectacular view, and a chance to see our planet as a planet.
I haven't written my memoirs or let the television movie be made about my life.
The stars don't look bigger, but they do look brighter.
I slept just floating in the middle of the flight deck, the upper deck of the space shuttle.
I had both male and female heroes.
It's well known that many girls have a tendency to dumb down when they're in middle school.
Studying whether there's life on Mars or studying how the universe began, there's something magical about pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. That's something that is almost part of being human, and I'm certain that will continue.
The space shuttle is a better and safer rocket than it was before the Challenger accident.
We can see cities during the day and at night, and we can watch rivers dump sediment into the ocean, and see hurricanes form.
But even in elementary school and junior high, I was very interested in space and in the space program.
The food isn't too bad. It's very different from the food that the astronauts ate in the very early days of the space program.
For a long time, society put obstacles in the way of women who wanted to enter the sciences.
Science is fun. Science is curiosity. We all have natural curiosity. Science is a process of investigating. It's posing questions and coming up with a method. It's delving in.
One thing I probably share with everyone else in the astronaut office is composure.
I do a lot of running and hiking, and I also collect stamps - space stamps and Olympics stamps.
It's easy to sleep floating around - it's very comfortable. But you have to be careful that you don't float into somebody or something!
I've discovered that half the people would love to go into space and there's no need to explain it to them. The other half can't understand and I couldn't explain it to them. If someone doesn't know why, I can't explain it.
So most astronauts are astronauts for a couple of years before they are assigned to a flight.
The view of Earth is spectacular.
I felt very honored, and I knew that people would be watching very closely, and I felt it was very, very important that I do a good job.
