Full speed ahead. I am always moving full speed ahead!
I don’t know if I have always been this busy, and I just haven’t noticed or what. But I seem to have a thousand things going at once, and yes I counted.
About one thousand I’d say (Dane Cook joke, maybe you get it). Anyway, school is busy and I keep finding fun activities to do. I’ll go into some of those fun things later, but now we’ll see how the classes are doing.
MWF 10:30am-11:30am – Air Traffic Management III – This class is a blast! I mean it is still work and you can’t just goof around, but me and my friend Aaron have so much fun. We are in charge of about 35ish airplanes over the course of 45 minutes, and they all seem to show up in packs. We tell all the planes what to do and where to go, but we are still learning. We often have close calls where planes get way to close to each other! You get so focused on one area or airplane and forget about others. So we are working on that and the near mid-air collisions are getting less and less, which is good.
TTH 8:15am-9:30am – Aviation Legislation – Well we took our first test a while ago and I got a 79, which isn’t too bad but I definitely wanted to do better. So when it came time to take our 2nd test, I got a 90! I was definitely pretty happy with that. My group is working on our team paper now, and we keep getting more and more sections done, but we have a long way to go. I’m not looking forward to writing that!
TTH 9:45am-11:00am – Aerodynamics – We took our first test and I ended up getting a 105! I thought that I was going to do pretty good, but not that good! The class average was a 90, so everyone else did good as well. One reason that I really like this class is that the professor is constantly relating the material to practical applications. It isn’t a class where you are sitting there asking yourself, “When am I ever going to need to know/use this?” The professor usually shows interesting short videos to help explain concepts and generally makes things pretty clear. That’s good.
TTH 11:15am-12:30pm – Commercial Pilot Ops. – This is also a class where we always relate the material back to practical applications. This class is usually more of a discussion class, so we just openly talk about the subject and if anyone has any questions, you just ask. We have group work a lot, so if you don’t understand something, usually someone else does so they can explain it. Also, we’ll often make jokes in class and generally have a good time.
TTH 3:45pm-5:00pm – Aircraft Engines – Some of the stuff in this class is over my head, so I normally have to study a lot outside of class. We have gone over all the engine basics, now we are going more in depth into each part of the engine. It is definitely some pretty interesting stuff.
TTHS 7:45pm-12:00am – Flight – So I ended up passing all of my pre-progs, so I got scheduled for my actual check rides! I did my oral about a week ago and I passed! The instructor that I had was real laid back and made it stress-free, which I greatly appreciated.
We talked for two hours about weather and different aspects of instrument flying and he thought that I had enough knowledge, so I passed! Now I am waiting to get scheduled for my sim and flight, which should be any day. I’ll let you know how everything went by next journal.
So school has been busy, and I have also been working on the side, so I haven’t seen a lot of free time lately. My typical day for a Tues and Thurs is class from 8:15-12:30, then lunch and some h/w; from 3:45-5:00 is another class, then Frisbee to about 6:30; then an AOA meeting from 7:00-8:00/8:30. My typical day for a Wed and Fri is class from 10:30-11:30 then work until 8:00ish. So I am definitely glad when Friday rolls around.
In other news, Bike Week is currently going full swing. There are bikers everywhere and it’s definitely getting pretty crazy. I haven’t gone to Main Street yet, but I’m planning on renting scooters with some friends and checking that out this Saturday. I’ll be sure to post pictures just like I did last year!
Well if you are a regular reader, which I hope you are, you know that Monday night dinners are becoming a habit in our apartment. This past Monday I called up my friend and asked what he was cooking, so he went and bought the cheapest steaks they had at Publix.
They were no Steakhouse steaks, but they were pretty good.
Things have been going pretty good with AOA lately.
There are definitely a lot of cool people in there, and I’m proud to say I am a part of it. Just recently we had a charity event which involved sleeping in cardboard houses. In a nutshell, different groups on campus raise money for charity by building cardboard houses and sleeping in them overnight. Well we built an awesome house, but at about 4:00am it started pouring and the winds got up to 30 something mph. So our house kinda blew away. There are a lot of pictures and I’ll be sure to post them online soon. The next morning we cleaned everything up and AOA gave tours of the College of Aviation building. It was parents’
weekend so we gave tours all day to students and parents. I had never given a tour before, so that was fun.
As you know, I’m a hockey fan and I got to go to Tampa last Wednesday to see the Tampa Bay Lightning play! I bought the tickets in December, so I had been planning it for a while. I got them as a Christmas present for myself, so I decided to get wicked good seats. Usually I’m in the nose bleed section where I am literally in the last row. Literally. I could stand up and do jumping jacks and no one would yell at me because there isn’t a soul behind me. Just a concrete wall. So I did almost the opposite and got tickets that were 4 rows behind the glass! That was the closest I’ve ever been and it was amazing! I definitely want to do it again. I took bunch of pictures of that as well, so be checking for those in the next couple of days.
Well the last few journals I have been alluding to what my Spring Break planned festivities were, but I never said.
For some reason I thought it would be fun to build suspense and not tell you what they were, but now I’ll tell you. On second thought…I better wait till next journal! Or not, I guess I’ll tell you now. Well, it’s probably no surprise but I am going to go snowboarding in Colorado!!! I’m wicked psyched. I am going with my friends Cris and Aaron and we are meeting up with Alex who lives in Colorado. We’ll leave on Friday and come back on a Wednesday. I’m so pumped, you have no idea.
There are several reasons: 1. It’s friggin Colorado! No Florida, no heat, just snow and coolness. 2. I get to go snowboarding. I love snowboarding. 3. It’ll be the first time I get to snowboard with my friend Aaron. He lives in Pennsylvania so he grew up boarding, but we have never gone together. 4. My friend Cris has never gone before. He’s only seen snow a couple of times, but we convinced him to go buy a board with boots and bindings and a full wardrobe! I’m sure he’ll pick it up quick, but until he does he will be our source of entertainment!
So I think that will wrap it up for this journal! I’ll be posting all those pictures shortly, so be sure to check for those. Well hope everyone is having a good year, and if you’re not, hopefully you’ll be in Daytona next year, because then it will definitely be a good year! Later!
-Blake
email: wasteofsoap@yahoo.com
pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wasteofsoap/
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