One Year On

The 26th of January marks one year since I started working as an instructor.

I remember the day well. On the evening of the 25th of January, I was offered an ab initio student. Having had no success finding a job for the last year, I accepted; ad the next day (co-incidentally, my 21st birthday), I met with my victim. Ah, I mean, student.

He taught me more than he realises, and I consider myself lucky to have had such a passionate and studious individual as my first student. It definitely helped make the job a little less stressful.
I am proud to say he passed his PPL Skills Test later in 2013. And only tried to kill me twice.

Since then, I have had 3 other students go solo, with one nearing the end of his PPL training.

Suffice to say I have considerably more grey hairs and stress-lines than your average 22-year-old. However, being able to teach someone and actually have them understand what you're saying is worth it. And having a student teach me something is a remarkably good feeling.

The job brings holds many interesting memories. Some happy, others scary, some angry and disappointed, funny ones, fear, and ones of relief. Perhaps one day I will write about some of those memories.

Regardless of the bad and scary moments, nothing is as calming as the view from the office (except for that time when a large sheet of rain was moving towards the airfield, obscuring the mountains. Oh, and the time when, during the take-off roll a flock of birds flew across the runway... then as we rotated another flock flew in front of us... and as we were climbing away, a third flock had a mass suicide attempt... thankfully those attempts were unsuccessful).

So here's to 2014 (I know I said that in the previous post, but anyway). And to Doing More.