Career Blog 3 - Backup-backup Planning

When I was four years old, my older cousin sat me down at his computer and booted up a game titled, simply, F-22 Raptor. Being four years old, the fact that I was allowed to use the flight stick and control the video game jet that way added to the realism. I was amazed that I was flying a plane, and it could shoot missiles, and if I hit a certain key combination, I could make the pilot of the jet eject. When I couldn't play the computer game, I hoped to go to the home of my father's friend. My father's friend had a house that sat close to a river and, on the bank of the river, he had a swing tied to a tree branch. The swing sat so that at the apogee of the swing, when you felt most weightless, it looked as if you were hovering over the river with nothing below you but air and water. I was four years old and I was flying. On the same river, at another friend of my father's, I learned about helicopters for the first time. My father's friend and the friend's brother flew helicopters at various points in their lives and still had an assortment of parts lying around the house as well as a helipad in the back of the house. I was taught by my father and his friend about main rotors and collective levers, and about what happens if the tail rotors fail. I found it incredibly interesting, even at a young age. Five years later, my mother and father took me to an airshow. It was fun just walking on the ground looking at all of the aircraft. When we went inside one of the buildings to look at ticket prices for ride-alongs. My father wanted me to fly in a helicopter but prices were $40 per person. The cheapest ticket for $15 bought a ticket for a circle around the city in a small Cessna single-engine plane. I gladly accepted my parents' offer and ran to get in line at the small blue and white plane. Once aboard, the pilot, co-pilot, another small boy, and myself buckled in and prepared to taxi for takeoff. The small plane accelerated down the runway, the tires rumbling and shaking the plane across the tarmac. Once we picked up enough speed, the pilot pulled back on the stick and we were airborne. The flight only lasted fifteen minutes but the view of the city thousands of feet below me only fueled my love of aviation. By the time I was sixteen, I had changed my mind on what career I wanted to pursue several times and had landed on becoming a commercial pilot. I began looking into aviation colleges and found that Wright State in Dayton had an impressive program for people to become commercial pilots. I also found that Wright State had fairly high entry requirements, requirements that I wasn't able to reach by the time I graduated. By the time my senior year came around, I had realized that if I joined the military I could become a pilot that way. I was again let down to realize that you had to first become an officer and also be exceptionally good at math to be allowed to fly as a military aviator. I set aside my dream of flying for profit when I got accepted into the University of Southern Mississippi, realizing that I could always pick back up on it when I was older and more financially stable. Becoming a commercial pilot has all but slipped from my mind as a possible career but I still have aspirations to get a private pilot's license.