People always seem to be a bit surprised when I tell them that I want to be a commercial airline pilot. It’s definitely not the most popular career choice among 21 year old girls in college. The first thing I get asked is what make me decide that I wanted to be a pilot. What better way to start off this blog then to answer that question for anyone reading.

So how did I decide that I wanted to be a pilot….

Well, for starters, growing up my mom worked as a flight attendant and my dad an airline pilot for U.S. Airways. From the day that I was born, I was used to the unusual schedules and constant travel that comes with working in the aviation industry. My family was constantly travelling and when my parents were working the same trips, my grandparents would take me to ride along on the flights and stay in the hotels with my parents. I loved being on the planes, being in new places and seeing new people from as far back as I can remember.

When I was in elementary school, career day came along one year and my mom asked me if I wanted to go dressed as a flight attendant. “Absolutely not!” was my response. I told my mom that being a flight attendant was an amazing job but that if I was going to work in a plane, I wanted to be the one flying it. Naturally, I decided to wear my dad’s oversized pilot’s uniform that day and carry my school books in his extra suitcase. 

I was pretty set on being a pilot until I hit middle school. Then, like most middle schoolers I wanted distance myself from my parents as much as possible. At that point I had completely abandoned the idea of being a pilot and went into high school with no real idea of what career I wanted to pursue.

Growing up in a rural Pennsylvania town and constantly working around animals helped spark my decision to go major in animal science. When I chose, that major I had aspirations of being able to could travel around and help improve the ways in which animals were cared for.

I decided to go to Penn State University because it was close enough to home and had a very reputable animal science program. My sophomore year, I took a class called, “Careers in Animal Science” where professionals from the industry would present and discuss our post-graduation options.  Towards the end of the term, I realized that I didn’t want a single job that I has seen all semester. After a year and a half at Penn State, I was certain that I did not want to pursue a career in animal science.

Once I realized that animal science was not for me, I to figure out what the heck I actually did want to do. I called my mom one day and after listening to me vent for almost an hour, she informed me that my younger brother was going to start taking aviation classes to work towards being a pilot.

As soon as those words came out of her mouth it was like someone just turned the lights back on that I shut off in 7th grade. I hung up the phone with my mom and called my dad to tell him that 1.) I realized what I wanted to do and that 2.) I wanted to be a pilot. He was a little skeptical about new career choice considering I was a sophomore at a universty that offered no aviation degrees and had never actually flown a plane yet.

I found a flight school near Penn State that offered discovery flights for people to see what flying is really like. After that first flight, cruising over Beaver Stadium and enjoying the views from the front seat, I was hooked.

Immediately after the flight ended I got ahold of my dad to figure out what I needed to do to keep flying. I flew for a few months through the flight school near Penn State before decided to enroll in a reputable professional pilot program offered by the Community College of Beaver County near Pittsburgh.

I began taking aviation classes over the summers to work towards an associate’s degree in professional piloting. I enrolled in a nearby flight school and started flying a Cessna 172 every chance thatI ould get. Despite the unusual route that I took to become a pilot, I am now happily pursuing a career that I grow more and more excited to about each day.