A feeling of emptiness

After five months of hard work (and stress) the ground-school phase has come to an end. Yesterday we finished our last exam, HPL. With this, today brings a rather pleasant feeling of calm (admittedly everyone's hangovers from last night has a part to play in that) and emptiness as we have nothing to do. The last few weeks of stress have now paved way for the excitement of our trip to New Zealand. We received our tickets earlier this week which started to make it all seem a little more real. However there is still some anxiety over the exam results which are yet to be made available to us.

In my time off, I thought I would reflect on ground-school a little and give you all a concluding view of the first hurdle to becoming an airline pilot.

• Have I enjoyed it?

Yes I have. It's been very hard work, and very time consuming, but I knew what I was letting myself in for and training to be a pilot is something that I really want to do. Having a genuine interest in what we were learning as helped a lot. It lessens the feeling of necessity and helps to motivate yourself to study and work as best you can. Having a background in a Maths and physics based subjects has helped too, meaning that underlying principles I already understand and have not had to learn from scratch.

• The teaching

The instructors have been excellent. They have really tried there best to get us all to the same level of knowledge and have presented the lessons in a well structured and engaging manner. Some of the subjects not so much, but they are naturally boring and hard to teach resulting in us just wanting to use the question bank.

• Free time

What free time? On our first day, a group cadets at the stage we are at now said that you basically have to write off five months of your life. To be honest it's not that bad, but there is very little time to waste. Taking a day off now and then is absolutely necessary for your sanity but if you work hard there is just about enough time in which to relax, see friends and family and take your mind off things.

• Is it difficult and what to expect?

The subjects themselves are not difficult to learn, especially with the resources made available to us. The difficulty is the amount of material there is to learn in the relatively short space of time. If you put the effort in then it is perfectly manageable. So what to expect? Well you'll be in lessons 9-4 most days and expect to study for a few more hours each evening and at weekends. Oh, and make sure you get a comfortable chair. You'll be spending a lot of time in it. 

For the time being though I'm going to enjoy the next couple of weeks, I'll let you know when I get to New Zealand with a few photos of my trip. As ever feel free to ask any questions.