This year I was told to make goals, whether personal or academical. Thinking about this, I thought about the future, as to what I could be doing. What would I be when I grow up? How would I want to be? A career is something a person must focus on for the rest of their lives, meaning that whatever a person chooses to do, they have to be motivated and be enthusiastic about what they do. My goal in the future is to be a commercial pilot based in the EU. This could take a toll on my physical and mental wellbeing, but it’s better than being stuck in an office, not liking anything you are doing.

Why am I so heart-set on becoming a pilot? Younger, I used to like watching planes take off and land from the lounge windows, sometimes it would be what I’d look at for hours on end. There was something there, I just didn’t know what that fascinated me about flying, the feeling of it and knowing that you are zooming above the surface of the earth at speeds well over 800 km/h. I asked a friend of mine to give me his copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator X, and since that day I would say is when I really started to enjoy flying. On the weekends and even during the weekdays, I would spend hours upon hours on end doing short or long hops from city to city just for the fun of it. I loved being in control, having all the responsibility on me and making such a system work, it just suited me. Nowadays, I even spent my own money on a plane (A319) for X-Plane 11, even joining Easyjet Virtual Airline which further incentivized me to fly and making me feel part of a community.

To get to the point where I will be flying commercially will take a long time. Not everyone can become a pilot just like that. There are licences, exams, and type ratings which a person has to go get or go through, and all of this can add up in cost, going all the way from $150,000 all the way up to $230,000, and that is what a person could be paying for university. I’ll have to first pass through NS before then going into whatever I want, but hopefully, if time and money allow, I’ll be able to go to a flight academy and get to wherever I want to be in life.

For now, I need to keep my head down and do all my studies, but hopefully, in the future, there will be a chance to do what I truly want to do. Even if doesn’t go as planned, there are many career paths to pick from, and maybe, just maybe I could be better off doing something else.