Ground School

 It's been a while since I’ve posted but for good reason since starting ground school. I’ve run down so many pens I’ve lost count, cut down so many trees for paper and sucked out energy from my iPad faster than my 8 year old mobile phone, and have since lost track of time. What is time? One of the reasons why I quit office work was because I had felt that my brain was dying; it was no longer elastic but a cobweb plagued, rigid and obsolete bit of blob. Oh how that thought was so true when I arrived…. So since being here in the Midlands (Middle(ish) of England) I’ve ….. Struggled to fit in, much unlike a well balanced aircraft.  I did not balance my aerodynamic forces correctly to allow myself for a smoothly transition in my new environment.  Curving myself into a spiral dive I watch myself spin, temporarily, out of control.  Sorry cheap seat passengers at the back (friends and family taking the ride with me), sick bags are in the compartment in front of you... [Slight side track - click here for a comedian’s take on the British use of the term, “ish.” I think it’s hilarious!] Before leaving home to begin my course I did say to my friends and family that getting into CTC was the easiest part. A couple laughed, others were bemused but either way they thought I was joking.  If only I was.  I thought doing 4 years of university was hard. Then I did my Masters degree, ha, Undergraduate is not hard, not even close! Try doing a Masters course which is akin to 4 years rolled into one. I remember feeling achievement when I got my Masters, it was a great sense of satisfaction. So before coming to ground school I thought, neh, it’ll be like doing my Masters. Ha! How wrong was I?! I thought my Masters was hard, it’s nothing compared to ground school. Trying doing 4 years rolled into 6 months and you start to get the idea! Despite (thinking) I was mentally prepared, I got my ass handed to me certainly in the first couple of months. The course is intense for sure but every piece of insecurity I felt from the past as I went through the education system came flooding out, hence the spiralling. I both didn't like nor had a great experience of the education system in the past. Ground school certainly reminds me of exactly why not, again. I find it absolutely humorous in a very unfunny way that we’re told to concentrate on the theory and learn the importance of understanding it. Personally I would certainly agree with that view, but the brutal truth of it is, we don’t have time to actually understand it, only (hopefully) enough time to learn the minimum required to pass the exams.  The pass mark for our exams is 75%, which in comparison to University level is of Master (honours) standards, and yet we aren't give enough time to actually master any of the subjects we learn.  Not for me anyway.  This is also a wonderful example of how I may also analysis things FAR TOO MUCH! The instructors here tell me that all the time! “Stop analysing things, you don’t have time!”  On the bright side of my rambling/analysing nonsense, I can now sit here and say, I did use trigonometry again. Which I’m sure you’ve all questioned this at some point in your high school life, "why are we learning this in Maths, is it necessary?"  Maybe one day I’ll look back at this moment in time and say, “yeah, this is why I was forced to learn all the parts in my ear. It is pertinent to flying after all!”  I look forward to that day. The instructors here are very aware and sensitive to the fact that we students have so much pressure to learn, drinking down information (overload) like a “fire hose”. But at the end of the day they have a job to do and we have exams to pass. It’s just unfortunate that on a course like this, time itself is very much the biggest luxury a student here doesn't have.