Ch.3. Q.1

Sally Ride was a very intelligent astronaut who earned degrees in English and Physics. She became an astronaut for NASA because of her impressive critical thinking skills. According to chapter 1 of Think, signs of a good critical thinker are the following: analytical skills, effective communication, research and inquiry skills, creative problem solving, etc. These are a few qualities that I think Ms.Ride takes pride in. For her job as a Capcom, whose tasks include, handling all the ground-to-staff flight communication shows that her critical thinking skills can be trusted with such an important task. According to the book, being an effective communicator is a good quality to have because it allows you to take a leadership position such as, a Capcom like Ride is. She also is described by her friends as being able to “see the heart of things” and “to quickly think”. These two descriptions describe not only Ride but an effective critical thinker. A critical thinker would quickly figure things out and getting to the real issue at hand.