Hmmmm....life is indeed complicated. Speaking from one who has a niece and a nephew that recently finished medical school, she may have little choice over which school she picks. I am relying on what my nephew said here, but evidently it is very common to apply at a bunch of different medical schools (I think he applied to around 40 or so) and only be accepted by 1 or 2 of them (I think he may have had his choice of three different ones but it's been a while so I can't remember for sure.) Also, when you have no experience dispatching you likewise can't be too picky as to where you want to take a job - you need to get a job with someone that is hiring and interested in you to get experience so that you can move on to a major eventually (assuming that is your goal.) And even when you move to a major, you don't get your pick of offers to choose from between Southwest, United, American, Delta, etc. You once again have to go with who makes you an offer.
This by no means is meant to discourage you from attending dispatch school or your girlfriend from attending medical school. Once she graduates medical school I am sure she will have more options about where she does her residency, etc....I know that my nephew and niece both did. And once you start dispatching, commuting is easier (assuming you work for a 121 carrier that is listed in CASS) because then you can jumpseat on your own and other carriers. However, the odds of you getting a dispatch job in the same city or area that your girlfriend gets accepted to medical school are...rather slim, I'll say that.
This is a good career field that I still enjoy working in almost 20 years after I "got the bug" and went to Sheffield. However, getting to choose where you live to do your job is not one of its advantages.
Yeah that is a concern of mine about the medical schools. Not to gloat or sound like a "proud mom" but she is insanely smart, has a 3.99 GPA in bio/pre-med with honors, has a ridiculous amount of volunteer hours and extracurricular, and some pretty good references, so I guess it's our hope that she can go pretty much wherever she wants to go for the most part. Sometimes life doesn't always work that easily so guess we will see.
I do get that you don't get much choice in dispatching starting out, thanks to you and the awesome people on the site who have taken me from being completely unsure of the whole process to a pretty solid understanding of it at least in respect to ADX. I have come to learn reading from you all that it's definitely something that, especially when you start out, you can pretty much be anywhere and you have to pay your dues and all.
I was actually going to school for CTI once upon the time, so fortunately at the least I already had expectations that I conceivably could start out pretty much anywhere... although I do get the difference is there really is only a few locations period where you do ADX, not like CTI where they are all over the place.
A lot of my closest friends are ironically in medical school and just graduated, so I do have a solid grasp on the whole residency thing fortunately from seeing them experience. I am currently doing my best to save money because I would like to go to AGS as early as January if it works out. Fortunately they have an online program for most of it and only a 6 day intensive in person part just 3.5 hours from where I live. In doing CTI, I did get to learn some things that I am sure will at the least help me out in school, such as aviation weather, fundamentals of atc, physiology and human factors of flight, elements of flight theory.. things like that, so I hope that it will aid me in learning the material for ADX, although I am sure it's a lot to learn and after that no matter where you go you learn a ton more and so on. I look forward to the challenge that I am sure will be.... well challenging lol.
I appreciate your words again, it's so nice to have people who don't mind telling us amateurs how it is etc. Not to sound like a gushing little kid, but my hopes are that some day I can do the same for someone else.
