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Passion and Perseverance A lesson on never giving up!
From a young age, I have always loved big machines, from semi-trucks to excavators. I enjoyed watching planes fly overhead, but I didn’t really become interested in aviation until I was given the opportunity to take an aerospace class in my eighth-grade year. We were promised a discovery flight, and, of course, that piqued my interest. I applied for the class, and was accepted. We started with learning the phonetic alphabet and the four forces of flight. Then, we learned about stalls and how the engine worked. We built ninety paper rockets with different wing types and launched them to see the best shape, made controllable airplanes out of styrofoam, and shot many bottle rockets. Just as we were starting our rocket engine unit, Covid-19 was spreading. We had also just started picking our dates to go on our discovery flight, but we were not able to go because our school shut down and no school field
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trips were allowed. I was upset that we couldn’t go; so, for months, I asked my parents to let me take a discovery flight. They were very nervous, as there are no other pilots in my family. I finally convinced them, and it was love at first flight. From there, I began the flight training that would change the rest of my life. This came with many hurdles. My city was hit by hurricanes, Laura and Delta, which stopped my flight training for a period of time. I eventually made my way back to the airport and started training again. I was ready for my first solo flight, but I was still fifteen years old. I eventually turned sixteen and soloed on my birthday, a feeling I’ll never forget! I had some trouble with my instructor, so I stopped flying for another period of time. During the time I did not have an instructor, I was studying for the written exam. I took it after two months and passed! The next week, I was on my way to OshKosh, Wisconsin, for the largest airshow