Senior Grace McMillan grew up in western New York state in an all-woman intergenerational home. In the 1980s, her grandmother and mother defected from the USSR and came to the United States as refugees. They were the only Ukrainian family in their semi-rural town. 'My mom would tell me stories about how tough things were when she was growing up,' McMillan says. 'I learned from her that my life is in my own hands, and I can do anything if I just put my mind to it.' As she began thinking about her future, she developed an interest in space through movies. Soon, she was intently reviewing the academic prerequisites to becoming an astronaut on the NASA website. 'I knew I needed a bachelor of science. I told myself I was going to MIT,' she says. She was ecstatic to enroll at MIT, but adjusting to urban life in Boston as a first-year was still a big change. 'It was vertigo. The buildings were so tall, and the streets were so busy.' Simultaneously, her autoimmune disease flared, and she...
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