Well we kicked so much butt we were able to come home a day early! With pretty much every other instrument still scrambling to finish or needing some nitpicky little thing to finish that felt really damn good. It's always nice to not be the guy holding everyone else up.
There were two young engineers working on another instrument from Goddard and it put a smile on my face to see a couple of early to mid-20's KIDS trying to figure things out and being really polite and obviously trying to solder, bend, crimp their way through getting their stuff installed. It really took me back to my early days at Goddard trying to do the same stuff all while being intimidated by the aircraft ground crew, the other very senior folks around and being generally insecure about your own abilities.
I've never been what you would call a confident person and lord knows I could use some help on my self esteem (despite how I may write and maybe brag about myself, I'm really my own worst critic and rarely allow myself moments of triumph). But I have come a long way. The pressure of an aircraft integration like this probably would have killed me a mere six or seven years ago. And don't get me wrong the work hours and stress definitely added a few more gray hairs to my beard over the last five or six months but the confidence of experience and some wisdom of my place in life really made the get-it-done part of things alot easier.
I guess there are some benefits to getting old.
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