From left are Graceyn Kitchel, Sunita Williams and Edith Kitchel. (Photo courtesy Graceyn Kitchel via Marnie Foucault, 8-18 Media director)

It was our lucky day. Eleanor and Iris — my friends and fellow 8-18 journalists — along with my younger sibling Edith and I were selected to attend a Lunch and Learn event.

Kall Morris Inc. of Marquette hosted it, allowing us to listen to astronauts Sunita Williams and Anna Lee Fisher and learn about their amazing experiences in space and at NASA. Both Fisher and Williams are amazing people!

Fisher first learned of her love of space when she was 12, listening to the historic flight of Alan Shepard, one of the original astronauts. When Fisher grew older, however, she shifted career expectations due to a lack of suitable prospects. So she went to UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) to study mathematics.

Unfortunately, the job opportunities in that field were also poor, so she switched to chemistry. Fisher got a bachelor’s degree in science and chemistry in 1971 and even pursued graduate studies in that field, publishing three articles on inorganic chemistry.

While she and her husband were working as emergency room doctors, they heard about the space shuttle program.

Fisher recalls, “I think my friends and family were surprised when they heard that I wanted to be an astronaut, because I had never really expressed the idea out loud before.”

Then, in 1978, she was selected as an astronaut candidate. After a year of training, she became eligible for flight assistant. Fisher’s early assignments included developing and testing Canadarm payload bay door contingency spacewalk procedures, as well as verifying flight software. Then, on Nov. 8, 1984, she launched on the STS-51L, becoming the first mother to travel in space.

Fisher says that her perspectives did change after she went to space.

“That overview effect, looking at the Earth and starting to feel more like I’m from planet Earth than from your respective country, and realizing how amazing this planet is and how black the rest of space is, and at least for the foreseeable future, this planet is where we are going to be, and we need to take care of it,” she said.

“The other thing that struck me was significant; I realized there was a chance we wouldn’t be able to come back with the shuttle. We didn’t have all the on-board capabilities that the newer vehicles have, and for that entire year, I was training.

“I had a young daughter, and I was very cognizant of all the little moments. If Kristen was fussy or something like that, it didn’t bother me in the least. I was just glad to be there with her and to have those moments and to treasure them.

“Watching the sunset, you know, I just started to realize how special life is here on this planet because I didn’t know how it would turn out, and the way I looked at the world during that year and a half while I was training carried over really for the rest of my life.”

I hope more people have the chance to see the world as a whole, rather than just as individual countries.

Williams’ love of space began when she was just 3 years old. She had watched another of the earliest astronauts, Neil Armstrong, and his famous walk on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission. The childhood dream fueled her career, leading her to the U.S. Naval Academy and into a career as a helicopter and test pilot before she was selected as a NASA astronaut in June 1998.

I was able to ask Williams how her perspective changed after going into space.

“What was nice about being in space and something that I would push onto everyone here is that when you are up there in space, we don’t have all the distractions we have down here on earth, so you can be in the moment and concentrate on what you are doing, and that’s it,” Williams said. “Not worrying about other things, and to do that is pretty refreshing, when you don’t have to worry.

“Of course, we all want to plan and make sure the lists are all checked off and that sort of stuff, but when you are doing an activity or if it’s on the weekend, if you just take a moment of your time and do what you are just doing, it’s so refreshing and it’s so awesome!

“It was just the best thing! It’s a gift we all have, but we get distracted. I feel like I can bring that back home with time with my family, for example. When I’m with my husband up in Maine, that’s it, I don’t care, of course, email comes in and stuff, but the time that we are doing something, that’s just doing that, and it’s really rewarding.”

Everyone is always saying how they wish they had more time, and after listening to these views on our world, I think we have it backward. We have enough time; we just have to decide how we are going to use it.

Maybe if we focused on the little things more, our world would be changed for the better.

Graceyn Kitchel is a homeschooled teen-ager living in Marquette. She and her family love to cook, dance, write, sing, play the violin, read, pet cats or any other furry animal available, and practice martial arts, especially ju-jitsu.