O Captain! My Captain!

 
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To Be Read At The Opening of D.P.S. Meetings:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

The Ten Commandments for ASCAN

Astronaut Candidates

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  1. Keep smiling, but not grinning.

  2. Keep your humor harmless, pure and perfect. People don't understand irony.

  3. Keep your weaknesses to yourself. If you don't point them out to others, they will never see them.

  4. Never complain; make survival look easy.

  5. You are expected to say something nice after each flight, class, or simulation.

  6. If you can't say something nice, lie — nicely.

  7. In particular, practice saying, "Thanks for pointing that out, sir. I'll really work on that."

  8. Be aggressively humble and dynamically inconspicuous. Save your brilliance for your friends and family.

  9. Remember — whatever's encouraged is mandatory. Whatever's discouraged is prohibited. 

  10. Nothing is sometimes a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.

REVIEW THIS LIST DAILY


Adapted from Michael Cassutt

Title image courtesy NASA