Need a little help

[notahippiedamnit]

Although I have been interested in aviation my entire life, and i have regularly visited this forum for the last 2 years, i just recently started taking flight lessons, but at the time i have had to stop the lessons, because of a lack of time. Although i know it's not the glamorous job that the large majority of you guys on here are shooting for, i greatly admire my flight instructor and i now have set my goal to teach others to fly as i am learning right now. The question that comes into play here is that i have been attending a local community college for about a year and a half now, but through some misguided information given by my counselor i still find myself about a year and a half away from getting an associates degree that i have really found that i don't even enjoy. I just want some info on whether you guys think i should stick with finishing the degree that i'm almost no closer to achieving than the day i started or to instead pursue my dreams as a flight instructor. At the current time between 2 jobs and school i don't have time to learn to fly, so it is either school or flying for me and i'm leaning towards flying.

 

[Swen]

Thats a tough one.
The education you recieved is not worthless. You can still transfer to other schools and get some, if not most or your credits transferred. Then you can go for a B.S. in something non-aviation that you enjoy more.

But then you say you only want to teach others to fly, so having a B.S. will not help much there, however, if you want to move higher up the career ladder (i.e. the majors) the degree would be beneficial.

You need to look at where you want to end up. Maybe there are some high paying instructor jobs out there, just make sure I get the memo when I become one.

 

[moxiepilot]

I'm with Swen here. I find it an admirable occupation to solely be a flight instructor. I trained once with a CFI who was in his 70's, taught for 40+ years and had over 20,000 hours dual given. He was one of the most knowledgable in the area.

The second part to that is that single engine cessnas aren't the only plane you can instruct in. If you have the resources and the desire you can always get rated in a bigger aircraft and still be teaching pilots how to fly. A lot of training schools have simulators, some of which are fast and modern airplane replicas.

Another point is that you have the desire to learn - flying not necessarily academia taught in the traditional college setting. It's not that you are completing your education by switching gears, quite the contrary as a matter of fact. You will learn much in this field and it really doesn't end...ever.

Just because you don't finish an AA now doesn't mean you wont later. Perhaps you will instruct at a school collocated with an institution you can get your AA or BA at (at a discount too!)

Good luck on your decision.

-mox