So What Is It Like to Fly in College

      College, as they say, is the best four years of your life. You make life-long friends, discover what career you want to purse, and obtain valuable leadership skills and experience through clubs and organizations. More often than not, it's your first time out on your own. About the only thing that makes it better is when some of your classes are taught in a cockpit.

First flight in a Cessna

     Flying is one of the great experiences I've ever had, and the single best major out there in my opinion. Most students study in the classroom, learning the material from books and real world examples. However, it's not often that you get hand's-on experience; maybe for a semester or two during an internship. For aviation students, we get to do it every semester, several times a week. The airport become as familiar as our classroom.

     The average week is mixed between the flight training, classes and other activities like working out and student organizations. We'll be studying for accounting, transition to filling out a navigation log and then off to the airport or the gym. There will be times when we're at the airport 4 or 5 times a week, while others we may only spent once or twice. There are plenty of times where it isn't so different than any other student at our school. Classes, homework, social life, and of course naps. Then there will times while the rest of our friends are sitting in class or at practice, we're flying over the school at 4000 ft. as we set up for an approach into the international airport.

Campus from 4000 feet. 

     As aviation majors progress in school, slowly but surely everything begins to revolve around flying. You get out of the general education classes, and into the more aviation classes. It's no longer just the basic of flying in private pilot, it's learning how to fly advanced jets and learning to be a commercial pilot and/or flight instructor. Even organizations you're involved with can become aviation focused if they're not already. Bright side about being a pilot, we don't care one bit that everything has become aviation focused. We're pilots after all.

     It's definitely a different experience being in a professional pilot program at a 4 year university. You quickly make friends with the other pilots (after all, we can talk about flying for days), and get connected with the aviation faculty. For the most part, we're just regular college students, but not everyone has a classroom at 6000 ft. or goes hundreds of miles and back in a day for a grade. One of my favorite quotes wraps it up nicely:

The cockpit was my office. It was a place where I experienced many emotions and learned many lessons. It was a place of work, but also a keeper of dreams. It was a place of deadly serious encounters, yet there I discovered much about life. I learned about joy and sorrow, pride and humility, fear and overcoming fear. I saw much from that office that most people would never see. At times it terrified me, yet I could always feel at home there. It was my place, at that time in space, and the jet was mine for those moments. Though it was a place where I could quickly die, the cockpit was a place where I truly lived.