Another Day in the Cave

By Dean’s Intern Sam Pond at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

It was promising to be nothing more than an average Tuesday at the Air & Space Museum. I was not exactly excited to drag my tired body all the way down to the Mall. But I did. When I arrived at the office I was greeted, per usual, with the piles of virtual files in disarray in the basement editing suite, aptly nick-named the Cave. Normally, I’m excited to sift through to find the hidden gems of silly bloopers from the show STEM in 30, but today, I was tired. However, that day did turn out to be different. I was pulled up to the conference room into an intern meeting I’d forgotten we had. And there was the guest of honor, NASA’s head astronaut Pat Forrester. Of course, I had gone through mounds of video footage compiled by my supervisors, which featured astronauts like Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin, but I had never met one before. He gave a presentation describing what he does for NASA, his four spaceflights and his time working on the international space station. But the best part was by far his reassurance that we, the interns, don’t need to figure out immediately what we want to do in the future. Maybe this internship will be a great stop on my way forward towards film or towards something else, but what I learned was that I don’t need to know that now. It was an awesome experience and there are even more astronauts coming this summer. I’m excited to get to work filming them.