A friend who works for CBC had mentioned doing an article a few times before, and I finally contacted her, expecting to be a 30 second interesting anecdote, as in 'you may have heard her on the radio with engineering students or for STEM, but UPEI professor Libby Osgood is now going to become a religious sister. Let's wish her good luck as she leaves our amazing province to join the CND sisters'. But no!! It turns out the engineer/science angle is more interesting than I realized. Matt Rainey on CBC PEI 's Island Morning had a 20 minute chat that was superbly edited down to 12 minutes. 12 whole minutes of material!! Nuts.
The experience was so cool! Matt met me in the lobby with a great big authentic smile, a familiar voice, and a beard that really threw me off (compared to his typically clean shaven appearance on ads for the show). We went back to the studio and started chatting right away. He came armed with my facebook post, and some really interesting questions about the intersection of science and faith - not what I was expecting. I thought it would be NASA talk, then we would briefly touch on the nun thing. I came dressed in a flowy dress and heels, as seemed appropriate for a radio interview (despite there being no cameras, I really only have 2 levels of dress in my wardrobes - professor wear or laundry day/tourist through Thailand wear).
You can see the article here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/libby-osgood-from-nasa-to-nun-1.4226188
And listen to the podcast (for a few weeks anyway):
What's blown my mind is the response. In 3 days, there were over 600 shares of the article. It astounds me that 600 people read it, let alone shared it. Matt's questions were the exact ones I would hope to answer (but didn't have the awareness ahead of time to know that). He asked what to tell peope who have an image of God in the clouds (since satellites have gone beyond where we thought heaven was), about the different creation stories compared to evolution, my days working on a NASA satellite and launch, what's coming ahead, and I was pleasently surprised - what drew me to the sisters. I was also worried about a negative spin, however the CBC editors made it sound better, taking out my repetition and um's, but kept the bulk of what I wanted to share - that I really felt like I was the only one who was a religious engineer, so I needed to hide it, and if we remove our preconceived constraints, who knows what amazing things we can try! Additionally, that my personal connections have deepened with friends coworkers and even strangers reaching out who felt similarly, so we are never really alone in our struggles if we are bold enough to share them. (These came to me in the shower the morning of the interview. Thank you Holy Spirit!! Before that I was dumbfounded what to say).
I have been on the radio and tv for engineering, my students, or STEM activities - but none of those were personal or about me. So this was really tough. My sister tells me I am great at deflecting any personal questions to get my conversational partner to talk about themselves - but that's hard to do on radio!! I am glad this happened, I'm delighted by the response, that perhaps someone might consider a vocation when they previously hadn't, but mostly I am glad it is done and to be back behind the safe walls of my blog.
This NASA nun is done for now! (Also I really dislike that tag - I am neither - I am training to be a religious sister and I worked for a company that built satellites for NASA. Never NASA directly nor am I a nun. But that aliteration is just too enticing!!). Okay, outtie for realz.
Hi Libby. I am learning new things about you which is awesome. I can't wait to really be with you face to face where we can share our stories.
ReplyDelete