![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/09\/zusack-4.jpg\")
<\/a>He thought back to the years before he was a psychology major and German minor at Wabash, to the eight-year-old boy who spent hours drawing new designs for rocket ships.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember one in particular. I was just smart enough to know that space isn\u2019t completely a vacuum, and that rockets were really expensive, so my eight-year-old brain put two plus two together and said, Okay, you just need a really big jet engine. And this one was really, really big, of course, because it was in space.\u201d<\/p>\n
He laughs.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I thought about how proud I had been of that, how that had been my favorite thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
He considered becoming an engineer but didn\u2019t want to get stuck in a cubicle solving problems. He wanted to build spaceships. So Zusack googled \u201cbuilding spacecraft\u201d and \u201chow to become an aerospace engineer\u201d and found a talk on iTunes University by MIT professor and former NASA administrator Dava Newman. She was talking about a new spacesuit she had designed.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone asked her what it was like to be an engineer, and she responded in the most eloquent way. She said engineers are explorers\u2014people who want to push the bounds of what can be done.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat word\u2014\u201cexplorers\u201d\u2014resonated so powerfully with me. I went down to IUPUI the next day and started looking at admissions material.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two engineering degrees and seven years later, Zusack just finished his rookie year as a level-one systems engineer at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.<\/p>\n
He loves it\u2014you can hear that in his voice.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a study when I first started at JPL, and we were looking at Uranus and Neptune. They were trying to figure out how to get inside these frozen-gas giants, because they recently discovered the core is water.<\/p>\n
\u201cEngineering is how we do that. We take what can be done and push the bounds of it to help humanity explore the unknown. I get to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Wabash is fond of saying<\/strong> \u201cmajors don\u2019t matter,\u201d and psychology majors find their vocations in many different fields. But Zusack is the department\u2019s first rocket scientist. Were Zusack\u2019s four years at Wabash wasted steps in the wrong direction?<\/p>\n Not at all, he insists.<\/p>\n \u201cIn high school and middle school, I excelled at math and science. I got to Wabash and suddenly the doors were wide open. I could do anything I wanted to, so I looked in the opposite direction. I was pushing the bounds of who I was.\u201d<\/p>\n Exploring?<\/p>\n \u201cI guess\u2014but what I\u2019m doing now never even occurred to me then. I could have majored in physics and gone into the 3-2 engineering program. But while I worked hard at Wabash, my engineering degrees took a lot of very specialized discipline\u2014 many, many all-night-at-the library-type of study nights. I wasn\u2019t ready to take this path. I wouldn\u2019t have wanted to narrow my focus like that then.\u201d<\/p>\n Zusack spent the next four-and-a-half years after Wabash as a branch manager at Enterprise Rental Car.<\/p>\n \u201cI loved the management aspect of that work\u2014it still serves me. I don\u2019t regret my time there at all\u2014it just wasn\u2019t for me.\u201d<\/p>\n Not everyone thought Zusack\u2019s step from the comfort zone to the outer limits was a good idea.<\/p>\n \u201cI was making pretty good money when I left; then suddenly that income stopped. I was on my own with some savings and this vague idea that I wanted to go back to school, but I didn\u2019t know exactly what I wanted to study.<\/p>\n \u201cMy parents have always been supportive of what I do; my friends thought I was crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n He remembers the fear.<\/p>\n \u201cIt felt like a free fall. My first impulse after I left Enterprise was to get another job, some profession making decent money. Just put this idea of restarting behind you. I needed a place to land.<\/p>\n \u201cSo when I decided I wanted to build spaceships, I didn\u2019t just think about studying engineering but where I would be working, likely at NASA. I wanted to plan a trajectory, even if that trajectory had to change.\u201d<\/p>\n Once he was on the path, things started to click.<\/p>\n \u201cI did surprisingly well, and better than at Wabash. But the stakes were higher this time too. I was on my own, paying for classes, and working part time. When I started doing well, it felt so much more rewarding.\u201d<\/p>\n He was discouraged at times, but being older brought a new perspective.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were moments, especially those late nights, when I seriously questioned my ability to do something. There\u2019s always doubt: Did I make a big mistake? Do I need to find a new direction? Then I realized the worst thing that could happen was I could fail a class. This isn\u2019t going to kill me. I can just retake it. I did a whole lot better once I realized that!\u201d<\/p>\n Internships gave him experience and patience.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d be working with people doing exactly the types of things I wanted to do. Anytime I got down, I would remind myself that this was where I was going.\u201d<\/p>\n Zusack\u2019s work at NASA Langley, NASA Marshall, the Lugar Center for Renewable Energy, and NASA\u2019s Johnson Space Center earned accolades, scholarships, and praise from his supervisors.<\/p>\n \u201cHe has excelled above all other students in pursuing this independent research work,\u201d said NASA Materials Engineer D. Laurence Thomsen after Zusack was named Intern of the Year by the American Society for Engineering Education in 2015. Thomsen particularly praised Zusack\u2019s technical writing, literature reviews, and innovative problem solving.<\/p>\n He wasn\u2019t building spaceships, but Zusack was designing tests for some of their parts, including a robotic arm for the International Space Station and materials for the planned Orion spacecraft. He explored how to extract water ice from the pole of the moon.<\/p>\n He hadn\u2019t landed the dream job at NASA yet, but he was certainly in orbit. \u201cHe played with great passion and connection to the music,\u201d Everett says of Zusack, who won the College\u2019s Lewis Catuogno Piano Prize in 2005. \u201cI would walk in the building and hear Steve in the practice room playing \u2018The Flight of the Bumblebee.\u2019 He had a quality in his playing that brought that piece to life.\u201d<\/p>\n When the renowned Eroica Trio visited campus for the College\u2019s Fine Arts Series, Zusack played the first movement of Beethoven\u2019s \u201cMoonlight Sonata\u201d for pianist Erika Nickrenz. She and Everett talked after the performance.<\/p>\n \u201cWe agreed he had a spiritual, celestial quality in his sound and interpretation of the piece. I knew music would be a lasting part of Steve\u2019s life.\u201d<\/p>\n He played the piece again a year after his graduation during an event rededicating the College\u2019s Bosendorfer grand piano; his last performance on a Wabash stage was music evoking moonlight.<\/p>\n Music was there as he contemplated his vocation, after he left Enterprise, during his search, and a respite between classes and work.<\/p>\n \u201cI would play for hours, just for me.\u201d<\/p>\n And just as his German minor helped him nab his internship at the German Aerospace Center, music helped him get through it.<\/p>\n \u201cI herniated a disk in my back when I was there, and I was in immense pain; they actually let me lie on the floor and work upside down on my computer to get my final report written,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of my co-workers had an electric piano, and he and another co-worker carried it to my apartment and set it up for me. I played everything I played in high school and everything I played at Wabash, because I could remember it all.<\/p>\n \u201cThe piano helps me recenter myself.\u201d<\/p>\n Life has come together<\/strong> for Zusack in Pasadena.<\/p>\n He relishes the work. His favorite recent project? A Venus lander.<\/p>\n \u201cThe record for any spacecraft living on the surface of Venus is 137 minutes. There\u2019s the sulfuric acid and carbon dioxide atmosphere, and the extreme pressure. It\u2019s like the bottom of the Marianas Trench. We\u2019re working on a mission concept for a lander that would live there for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n Zusack\u2019s role in the process has a liberal arts ring to it.<\/p>\n \u201cI bring together several different disciplines of engineering. If you want to build a spacecraft, you need a power system, a propulsion system. You need structure, you need communications. You need all these different components, and my job is to make sure they all work together.<\/p>\n \u201cThe way I go about this is a little bit different, because most people who come to JPL have a strictly engineering background. I have liberal arts, I have business, I have engineering. I think one of the reasons I got the job was my diverse background.\u201d<\/p>\n He says his training in psychology helps him communicate more effectively with \u201cvery passionate and very intelligent people\u201d who tend to be introverts. \u201cI try to feel their perspective, their point of view.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a clear marriage between all of my previous experience and what I do here.\u201d He laughs. \u201cIt\u2019s almost a liberal arts approach to meshing the liberal arts with non-liberal arts.\u201d<\/p>\n Zusack says he realizes the \u201cfree fall\u201d he took to get here isn\u2019t for everyone.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a dangerous path\u2014I had to be all in. I risked a lot in order to get here. Though it did work out spectacularly well.\u201d<\/p>\n He loves the weather in Pasadena. He can see the mountains from the house he and his partner are moving into. He\u2019s been checking out the hiking trails, and one last piece of the puzzle is about to fall into place.<\/p>\n \u201cNow that we\u2019ve got space, one of my first purchases will be an electric piano\u2014something with the feel of an acoustic. I\u2019ve been looking\u2014they\u2019re out there.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Don\u2019t Give Up<\/strong> I hesitate to give advice because most people who are my age\u2014in my late 20s when I started this path\u2014 have family or other responsibilities that complicate things more than what I had to deal with.<\/p>\n I\u2019d love to say, \u201cRisk it all, because it\u2019s worth it,\u201d but that choice is not always in the cards.<\/p>\n So my advice would be, Don\u2019t give up. Take the time to get to know yourself; to figure out what you want to do. If you see it, don\u2019t give up trying to get there.<\/p>\n Giving up is comfortable. It\u2019s easy. You can just go with the flow and let your life figure itself out. The terrifying thing is challenging that.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t give up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Steve Zusack \u201906 remembers the moment\u2014the exact word\u2014that convinced him to jettison the business world and build spaceships. He had left his position at Enterprise (the rental-car chain, not the starship) to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":4816,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-class-notes","category-features"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/09\/zusack-2-1024x683.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4815"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4945,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4815\/revisions\/4945"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nA constant through all<\/strong> of this was the piano and a love of music he had pursued throughout his time at Wabash as a student of Cheryl Everett.<\/p>\n
\nWM asked Steve Zusack, \u201cWhat would you tell those who are still searching for their vocation or work they find more meaningful?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n