Last night was the first night of ground school classes.
I arrived to the class early, which is as rare as burning bushes that talk to you. If you could survey all my teachers and college professors you’d get a consensus that early to class isn’t part of my skill set. I promptly made friends with the guy with the iPhone, Jim. Jim is a gregarious guy who has already flown two lessons in the aircraft. I didn’t know you could do the actual flight training before you finished ground school, so I was there 20 minutes early and already learned something. Seems like a good value for time spent in the classroom, and I hadn’t even met the instructor yet.
One by one, the other student pilots arrived making for a total of 14 students. I noticed an unusually diverse crowd. Granted, they were mostly men. There’s one wisp of a woman who was very nice and we only spoke briefly, but she’d already taken a couple of lessons so was ahead of the game.
The next three hours was a thorough overview of aviation in general and what to expect from the training. The instructor knew the material, and while he was long winded, he did a fine job of leading the class through the material in chapter one.
I left after hearty farewells to some of my more gregarious classmates and headed home.
I am excited about undergoing the training and even more anxious to by some flight hours and get started with the practical application. I think it will also be almost therapeutic for me to engage in something which I can get excited about. If the rest of this is as positive an experience for me as last night was, it’s going to be a helluva transformative nine weeks.
But I won’t jinx it. We’ll see how tomorrow’s class goes.