Average Astronauts
A Lesson in Humility
When I got my first C in college, I was harder on myself than the moment deserved. Actually, it was like a punch to my gut. A 180 from the years of growing up when I would have been relieved to get Cs; in fact, I was lucky to graduate as a “barely average” kid. But this felt different. I was an adult now—married, a mother of two, a veteran—and I was learning to trust my own intelligence; the kind I had curated in the Army when service and duty demanded more of me than any classroom ever had. I’d made the dean’s list. I’d proved to myself that the girl who once scraped by was far stronger and sharper than she knew.
And yet here I was, staring at a single C as if it were the final verdict, the last word about who I was becoming.
I let that grade echo louder than it deserved. It churned up every old doubt I thought I’d outgrown. All the years of being “average,” all the quiet hopes that I’d finally stepped beyond that label, came rushing back. It’s remarkable how one minor setback could return me to the outdated version of myself, as if the past is always waiting to reclaim me. But the truth is, I wasn’t that unsure kid anymore. I’d lived enough life, earned enough wisdom, and carried enough responsibility to know better. And still—I treated that one grade as if it held the authority to rewrite my whole story.
And that’s when a friend, with the kind of quiet kindness that doesn’t ask for attention, stepped in. She didn’t offer a lecture or a list of reasons why I was being too hard on myself. She simply placed a gentle axiom before me, the way you might set down a cup of warm tea:
“My dear… remember, there are average astronauts.”
Her words settled in a place I didn’t know was waiting to be comforted.
Average astronauts.
Men who rode fire into the sky.
Men trusted with the hopes of a nation.
Men who were still, in many ways, wonderfully human—strong in some places, ordinary in others.
It was such a simple reminder, but it loosened something in me.
Being “average” was a threat, as if it could undo everything I had learned, earned, survived. It had slipped my mind that my journey from barely-passing student to Army Veteran, wife, mother, and dean’s-list scholar was not a straight line upward. It was a life lived in seasons—some rich with confidence, some shaped by adversity, all of them forming the person still and always learning.
The truth is, I didn’t need to outrun “average.”
I needed to bring it home.
Average is not the opposite of worthy.
Average is not the enemy of becoming.
Average is simply one of the many conditions of being human.
Even astronauts carry it with them into space.
So I let myself breathe again and shift my perspective.
The grade is a grade—nothing more, nothing less.
There would be averages in the future.
Humility is the ability to right-size the moment.
It’s remembering that perfection is not the aspiration—
~ Presence is.
~ Growth is.
~ ~Grace is.
I may never fly a rocket. But every day I sustain a good enough life, and this is a tidy sum.
As an aside: The Mercury Seven were the original NASA astronauts: Carpenter, Cooper, Glenn, Grissom, Schirra, Shepard, and Slayton. In the selection process, NASA psychologists and test-pilot examiners saw in them a mix of strong intellect and psychological maturity. Smithsonian Magazine+1
Historical reports suggest their IQs clustered around 130–145, with some sources estimating a mean near 136. Solar Views+1
Even among these pioneers — men who would go on to define the beginning of human spaceflight — “average” by some measures was part of the picture. And that reminds us: being human, with all its complexity, is enough.
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