Robert Ballard Interview (page: 7 / 7) Discoverer of the Titanic	Print Interview

What advice would you give to young people, just beginning their careers?

Robert Ballard: You have to build confidence. Most important, you have to like yourself. Not to be egotistic about it, but to come to grips with yourself.

Most of the time you are growing up, people tell you what's wrong with you. Your coach tells you, your parents tell you, the teachers tell you when they grade you. I think that that's good in the early stages, because it helps you then develop skills. But at some point in your career, generally I think when you are in your teens, you look in a mirror and you have to say, despite all the bumps and warts, "I like that person I'm looking at, and let's just do our best. "
[ Video ] Low High    [ Audio ] Quicktime	[ Key to Success ] Integrity

It's that point, where you start to take what's good about you and polish it like an apple.

I think everyone is unique. We know that. The only way you find out what you are is by trying everything, and then at some point you take what you are, which is unique. Don't ever try to mimic anybody, because you will only be second best. You can never outshine the thing you are trying to mimic, so don't ever do that. Don't idol worship. Finally, be yourself. Then you are going to be really unique and exciting. People are going to beat a path to your door if you polish your inner self.
[ Video ] Low High    [ Audio ] Quicktime	[ Key to Success ] The American Dream

I think Joseph Campbell summarized it: "Life is the act of becoming, you never arrive." People plan a lifetime to climb Mount Everest, and they only stay up there five minutes. It isn't the view they're after, it's the fact that they made it. It's in the act of becoming that you learn about life. You learn about yourself. The only way you are going to discover that is to try. And I always say to a kid, "If you scale a mountain a thousand feet high and fall off of it, you are going to break your neck. So scale one a hundred thousand feet high. If you fall off it, you are still going to break your neck." I believe that it's just as difficult to do something easy as to do something difficult. You get up in the morning, you put on your pants, and you work till you go to bed at night. So shoot for a big one. There is no added risk in shooting for a tall mountain. But what's so beautiful about a tall mountain is, when you get to the top of it, you can see over all the other smaller mountains, and you can see these other peaks. The most exciting thing about success is being able to meet the people on those other peaks, and learn how they got there. You'll find that whether it's in the arts, or science, or in sports, it's still the climbing process.

So there isn't any specific mountain that's unique. Don't spend all your time trying to figure out which big mountain. Pick the closest one, and climb it.

You have indicated that, very soon now, you intend to make the biggest, most important climb of your whole career. What's that all about?

Robert Ballard: I'm excited about my marriage. I'd say that's the most important mountain, probably the tallest of all. Again, I revert back to Joseph Campbell. A person as an individual can only scale mountains so high. Man sees the world through a particular set of eyes. Woman sees it through a different set of eyes. It's like binocular vision. You can't see the world in stereo without both views -- slightly different, both valid -- that collectively show the world as you can never see it through one eye. To find your other half, that's what your mate is all about. I've been lucky and done that, and now I want to see the world through that binocular view. I want to know what she thinks about everything, because the truth is in between.

Is there also a new scientific project in store for you?

Robert Ballard: I've got a lot of challenges right now, but I'm not driven by anything right now, other than my marriage. That's as intellectual a challenge as any scientific challenge I can think of. I'm really homing in on that.

You've been doing some work with children. What's the project called, and what's it all about?

Robert Ballard: It came out of the Titanic experience, like so many things that changed my life. When I found volcanoes, and the hydrothermal system, I did well in the scientific community, but I was not flooded by letters from kids. The day I found the Titanic I started having thousands and thousands of pen pals: kids all around the world. Our book on the Titanic came out in eleven countries, and what we discovered was a fascination with high-tech adventure, at a time when children were dropping out of real science, not taking physics, not taking math. America's scientific literacy was plummeting. We are now seventeenth in scientific literacy in just the Western world. We saw an opportunity. Why are kids writing me letters if they don't like science? I'm a scientist. What I do is science. I need to communicate that to them. What's exciting about what I do is the moment of discovery. Unfortunately, you can't take kids down in your submarine, or out on your ships, in large quantities.

So we devised a project called the Jason Project. Remember that I am in an imaginary submarine at sea. I'm not down there, my robots are. I'm in my room. What if I built identical rooms and put them all over North America, and connected them by satellite? If a child entered one of these other rooms, they'd see what I see, when I see it. So I've built twelve of them. I went to teachers, and I said, give me your students, and bring them into this room, and I'll take them on the expedition. We signed up 250,000 kids. We told the kids that they couldn't get in the room unless they promised to study science for four months. We wrote a tough curriculum, in the physical sciences, where they're not just studying math and physics and chemistry, but robotics, telecommunications, the language of science. They studied it, no problem. They wanted to get in that room.

See, you have to think of math as wind sprints.

When I played college basketball, I'd practice for two hours, and just as I wanted to go to the locker room, the coach would say, "Give me 20 wind sprints." "I don't want to do 20 wind sprints." And he would say, "Do you want to play in tomorrow's game? Then you'd better do 20 wind sprints." And I did those 20 wind sprints, which gave me the stamina to survive four quarters of basketball. You will never sell a kid on mental wind sprints. You've got to sell them on the game, then they'll do the wind sprints. So what we wanted to do, is to show them what excitement exploration is, and sell them on exploration, on the quest for knowledge. Sell them on that, and how exciting it is and rewarding it is. And when you hook them, then they will go prepare themselves.
[ Video ] Low High    [ Audio ] Quicktime	[ Key to Success ] Preparation

So every year, we mount an expedition somewhere in the world. This coming year, we are going to go to the Galápagos Islands, and the kids will go there live, through our technology base. But they don't get to go unless they study science. It's working. The first two years we had a half a million kids involved. And they are coming back. We are in our third year. They keep signing up for science.

Lehigh University has joined the Jason network, and they are tracking the kids, and asking them the questions. We discovered that the excitement of exploration has no sex. It's as exciting to boys as it is to girls. The most formative point in a child's mind about science is between grades six through ten. Six through ten is when kids decide whether they are going to go into science or not, long before college. The game is over before they take their SATs. We've got the greatest university system in the world, but one of the worst pre-university systems in the world. I want to change that. And we are.

Great idea. Thank you, Dr. Ballard. It's been fascinating.

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