Hi everybody! I hope all is going well with you. I have had a great few weeks since I last wrote for you—busy, but fun nonetheless! From schoolwork, to flying, to the Wings and Waves Airshow, it certainly has been a good month.

One thing that you will find about Embry-Riddle when you start classes is that the work comes in cycles or “waves,” at least for me. You will find periods of time where the workload is very light and there is not much going on at all, and then all of a sudden you will have tests and papers and other things all come into play all at one time. The best way to handle this, I have found, is to plan ahead. Use a planner and take advantage of those periods of light work to get ahead so that when the assignments do start piling up, you are already ahead of the game. As I write this, I am in one of those periods where assignments are piling up, but, by thinking ahead and getting some other assignments done early, I can better manage everything going on.

But, hey, you don’t want to hear about that! You want to know what’s going on in Daytona Beach and at Embry-Riddle, so let’s get into it.

A large portion of my time, since I last wrote, has been spent with clubs and activities. At the beginning of the semester, the Legacy Walk (a large pathway in the middle of campus) is lined with all types of different clubs and student organizations in hopes of recruiting new members in a large Activities Fair. At the beginning of the semesters, all of the clubs want to meet at once, which causes a few scheduling conflicts and lots to do! Of course, as the semester continues, this settles down a bit. This has prevented me from doing all of the things I usually do on the weekends, but now that everything has settled down, I am sure I will get some more interesting stories for you!

One thing that I did with some friends one weekend was the VIP Tour of the Daytona International Speedway. You may or may not know that the speedway is about a mile from the campus, just on the other side of the Daytona Beach International Airport. At the Speedway is an attraction called the Daytona 500 Experience, and it offers a bunch of different tours and activities. However, once a month, they offer the VIP tour which takes the guests everywhere, including in the towers, infield, the exclusive “Daytona 500 Club,” and all the places usually only the drivers can go. Particularly with the track repaving project still underway, it was very interesting to be able to see things close up. From the viewing towers and VIP lounges, I found it interesting that Riddle was clearly visible, as was the ocean and coastline 3 miles away. It was really a great experience and I would recommend checking it out.

You probably heard that Riddle hosted the Wings and Waves Airshow this past weekend in Daytona Beach. Over 20 different exhibitors attended, including the Canadian Snowbirds, the F-22 Raptor Demonstration Team, the GEICO Skytypers, and more. While I was able to experience the airshow from the beach as a spectator on Sunday, it was on Friday and Saturday that I was able to see it a different way. In my previous writing, I mentioned about my interaction and employment at home in Airport Operations.Here at Riddle, at the Daytona Beach International Airport, I am also involved with the Operations department. The task of monitoring all of the parked planes for Wings and Waves, coordinating where they would park, when they would depart, which runways and taxiways would be closed, etc. was the responsibility of airport ops. I was on the airfield with ops on Friday and Saturday helping with these things. I was able to talk to the F-22 pilots and Snowbirds a lot and even got to look around all of their aircraft. It was definitely an awesome opportunity. On top of all of the activity going on at the airport with the Wings and Waves Airshow, three charters came in to Daytona on Saturday. One charter was an Allegiant Airlines McDonnell-Douglas MD-82, and the captain was nice enough to let me and an operations agentride up in the cockpit as they repositioned the plane to the gate to pick up their passengers. As I write this, 3 F-16’s are departing the airport over my dorm room, heading home after the airshow. It was a great weekend and I look forward to the next airshow in two years.

Other than everything I’ve mentioned, not all that much else has been going on. I have been continuing my flight training for my instrument rating and anticipate a checkride for that in early November. I am looking forward to going home in a few weekends for fall break. It will be nice to go home for a weekend and see my family and my dog!

I guess that’s about it! As usual, don’t hesitate at all to ask me any questions! Talk to you soon.
Pete

I finally had the chance to do something I had wanted to do since I became interested in attending Embry-Riddle, observe a flight. Yes, for a student like me, who was attending school for Communications, something about flying still intrigued me and I had made it a personal goal to go on an observance flight before the end of my semester. I walked over to the flight line and, with a little fear and hesitation, proceeded to go to the flight desk and ask about observing a flight. Of course, I had to have to permission of the pilot, but, thankfully he allowed me to fly with him and his instructor. His name was James and he was quiet yet friendly. After I received my visitor’s badge and a loaner pair of ear muffs I was more than ready to go. We walked out to the gate and were let in by a security guard then we proceeded through the other gate. We were picked up by a golf cart and brought down to the plane that he would be flying. I stood in one place trying to be out of his way but still so interested as he cleaned down his windows and checked over the plane thoroughly. He told me it may be awhile since he still had yet to get topped off with fuel and wait for his flight instructor. At this point though I didn’t mind at all, I knew I was going to observe this day and I was so stuck on the idea the nothing could bring me down. His instructor walked up after he had gotten more fuel and introduced himself to me, his name was Daniel. He told me he had been flying for six year and was a graduate from Embry-Riddle as well. His dream job was being an instructor at Embry-Riddle and after four years of college and a few months of waiting for an open position he had become an instructor. An hour nearly had passed but it was worth the wait because there really was no room for error when flying and having a guest passenger (who did want to return safely). Finally though, the time did arrive, we boarded the plane buckling up and going over different safety procedures while waiting to get clearance from ATC (Air Traffic Control) so we could begin our flight. We taxied down the flight line and after a brief propeller check between the student and instructor we rode down the runway, faster and faster we went and slowly ascending into the air nearly hovering into a higher altitude. I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was in the air, I had flown so many times before but it was much more different with being in a smaller aircraft. I have lived in Daytona Beach basically all my life and as we flew towards New Smyrna I saw just how much of this place I had actually ever seen. It was breathtakingly beautiful and I was honored to have been able to go on a flight as such. Since he was practicing landings we landed and took off multiple times from the flight deck in New Smyrna. With each take off I noticed more about the surrounding land and how beautiful it was to be up seemingly weightless and seeing how the sun shone through the plane’s windows and the beach down below that looked endless, I never wanted to leave from the air. Unfortunately, the flight did come to an end (an hour total not including prep time) and though happy we made it back safely, I had wished it could’ve been a longer flight to see the beauty that every pilot has the opportunity of witnessing everyday on our campus.

It gave me a whole new outlook on the pilots at our school, each one of them takes a risk every time they fly but it was an experience that most people would never experience or some would be too afraid to. Honestly, the flight made even me want to change my major so that I could fly to be a daredevil and see that captivating view once more, however, I did make a promise to myself before leaving to take at the least one observance flight each semester (though secretly I dared myself to go once a week or four times in a month since there are NO LIMITS to how many observance flights a student takes believe it or not). I would suggest to every student to take an observance flight at some point in your college experience. Sure you may have been on so many other flights but unless you’re a pilot, well, you shouldn’t want to miss out on flying in the sky with Embry-Riddle finest. Who knows maybe you will have a change of heart and want to fly, or maybe you will see what the drive for the pilots that we see flying above us as you walk to class every day. A beautiful experience that I can barely describe in words it’s much better to be seen in person. Since I will be taking more flights up (hopefully really soon) I plan on trying to take pictures and maybe even some video of my trips up. If you would like to view them please feel free to add my facebook page (you can also ask me questions about campus and I will try my best to answer for you) or you can contact me via email at: gatorg12@yahoo.com Pictures to come soon so keep looking out!

A month has gone by already? It’s so unbelievable to think that just over 40 days ago, I was back home in California. I loved my life back home, don’t get me wrong, but it feels like this is where I belong. Last blog, I just introduced myself, so let me say a little about what’s been going on since I got here.

AdrianaMove-in day was August 25th. Knowing how hectic things can be during this time, settling in was relatively a breeze! Anywho—I live in Adams Hall, 5th floor (i.e the penthouse). Honors program got me here. See, if you apply early enough (by the beginning of the Spring), you might get an invitation from Dr. Kain, the honors program coordinator, asking you to apply for the honors program. Not everyone gets it, but if you have enough AP/IB credits and a good SAT score, all you have to do is send in an essay and your resume, and hope for the best! For those of you who think that it’s more work (and therefore a waste of time), don’t fret!! Actually, we get many credits waived just for taking honors courses. For example, since I already had most of my general education credits out of the way from high school courses, the honors seminar replaced my Speech credit! Such a great feeling, especially since I’m not a very good public speaker. Did I mention the material perks too? Well, this year we all got free iPads. We thought it was a joke, too, until we opened our gift bags at the Honors Banquet the eve of move-in day. We also get priority registration for next semester, which is a great perk, considering freshmen are usually the last to pick.

Next big event was Orientation week. It was definitely a lot more pumped up than I would have thought. The highlight of the week was the O-team, who is in charge of easing us through all the activities and to-dos of the week. Saturday morning, I was sitting quietly in my room when I hear a mob of screaming maniacs coming down the hall. I open the door slowly to see who is outside, and a hand reaches in and drags me outside. We are paraded down to the elevators where packs of people are stuffed inside, and the O-team starts screaming ‘O, O, O, O’, which is their motto. Although I was a tad taken back at first, they took us to the ‘Food Dude’, who is a former “The Next Food Network Star” contestant, who taught us how to stay healthy while in college. Trust me it is a lot better than it sounds. We also had a quite humorous skit by our RAs (Residence Advisors) about safety, then a nice re-make of Deal or No Deal—aptly named Beat the Banker for copyright purposes. When it came time to say goodbye to my parents, I was glad I had a few friends with me.

The second week of school, the University Diversity Office set up a scavenger hunt for women only, where we had to run around the school for a good hour looking for clues. It was so tiring, but I got to meet my mentors. The program is called FIRST (Female Initiatives: Reaching Success Together), where Freshman girls in Engineering, Space Physics and Engineering Physics are set up with older girls, who will act as their mentors throughout the year.

AdrianaSpeaking of clubs, the Student Activities office organized an Activities Fair on Legacy Walk (between the school buildings), which showcased all of the possible ways to get involved around campus. As I walked down the path, I couldn’t believe how many things to do there are! I found clubs anywhere from Airsoft to several different cultural groups, to a club for gamers to even a Civil Air Patrol! I guess it does make up for our lack of a football team…. Come on, how many schools can say they have their own air acrobatics team?? Or a skydiving club?? Like many would say around here, ‘Only at Riddle’.

I joined a few clubs (a few too many some would say). Right now, I’m sticking with only a few: Touch N Go Productions (they’re amazing. They are in charge of organizing all the activities. Check them out @touch-n-go.org), the women’s Baja team (which is the only all-women’s mini-Baja team in the world!), and, of course, the FIRST program.

Two weeks ago, when I wrote my first journal, was my birthday. I was feeling very down, since I wouldn’t get to spend my 18th birthday with my family. However, at exactly midnight, my roommate Bharvi and the rest of my good friends threw me a surprise birthday party in my room. I can honestly say that I’ve never been more grateful to someone before. Later that day, we went to my friend’s grandmother’s vacation home, where they baked me a cake and had a Pixar movie night just for me (I absolutely love anything Disney and Pixar). A great tip, which came up on the Facebook c/o 2015 page, was to meet people before you get to college. Embry-Riddle has two open houses in October and April. This is a fantastic way to meet up with the people who will potentially be your best friends in college.

AdrianaWhen it comes to the academics, college is much simpler than I would have thought. Most teachers make us have a schedule to manage our time and so far, it’s worked like a charm. I got through 3 tests for far, and right now, my team and I are working on a satellite for EGR-101 (which is an introduction to engineering). What amazes me the most is that at this school is that most teachers use airplanes or rockets when explaining concepts. In physics, for example, half of our problems deal with an alien and a rocket ship. Again, only at Riddle.

Before closing for now, I would like to send out sincere congratulations to the Navy Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) freshmen on their graduation this week. They are now midshipmen, and a step closer to becoming officers! They work very hard (Physical training 5 days/week, 10 hours tutoring mandatory/week) and deserve our thank you for serving our country.

I’m all done for this week! Remember you can always e-mail/contact me on facebook if you have any questions.

Wow, it’s October and that means I’ve been at Embry-Riddle for more than a month now. It has been a great experience so far. A lot of events have been happening on campus. We’ve had an activities fair which was a lot of fun. All the clubs and organizations had a booth and you could easily walk up to them and get more information. We have such a variety and diverse selection of clubs on campus. From Up ‘til Dawn who raises money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to the skydiving club, it really is amazing the number of choices you have. We’ve also learned of the wild weather Florida goes through. We’ve had days of pure sunshine to our first washout day where it was completely cloudy all day and rained for the majority. We also had our first tornado warning which was huge amount of fun. Our group of friends got our CodeRed phone call warning us of the situation and since we lived in McKay, which is the best dorm, it is also the most open; we decided to run through the rain into Doolittle, which is basically the oldest yet sturdiest building on campus. Sacrifice for having to share your bathroom with seven other people. We also dealt with our first Tropical Storm. It was supposed to come right over us and dump a couple inches of rain but decided to sneak off to the east into the Ocean and gave us a couple sprinkles and some humidity.

When it comes to the weekends, they tend to be a semi-blur. If you bring your car, which freshman are allowed to do on campus, you can drive and spend the day in Orlando or drive down the coast, basically go anywhere. Sorry for our roommate and I because we don’t have a car. So when it comes to the weekend we have to entertain ourselves around campus, which isn’t too difficult but not as fun as Disney World or Universal Studios.

Classes this past month have been pretty easy to say the least. I lucked out this semester and get to sleep in on Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays till 9:30 am and get up for flight on the other days varying between 7:00 and 9:00. It all depends on what activity I’m doing; flight activity can be a flight, an oral, or a simulator session. Speaking of flying, it has been an amazing experience. Now remember, I came to Embry Riddle with only my Discovery flight under my belt, so everything is brand new to me. I have been told by my teacher and my advisor and have seen it first-hand that every now and then you will have a bad flight. Things just don’t go right and you get out of the plane after completing your shutdown and secure checklist and just feel terrible. You just have to realize that it will happen and it’s ok. When mine happened, my flight instructor was showing me a maneuver and I tried it and it wasn’t too good. I tried again and nothing improved. You aren’t going to be a marvelous pilot over night. You’re going to have your ups and your downs, some more than others, but overall you will love the experience.

We actually just completed doing our stall maneuvers. A stall is a technical definition of when the airplane exceeds it’s critical angle of attack and doesn’t generate enough lift. In layman’s terms, the airplane is pitched up high enough and is going a certain speed that the plane begins to fall. So my flight instructor and I are performing the 2 types of stalls; power-off and power-on, which just configure the airplane into different settings. We had the airplane pitched up that you could only see sky and waited and waited until that speed showed up on the airspeed indicator. Then all of a sudden we hear the stall warning horns go off and then we pitch down and fall slightly. Then we go full throttle and recover from the stall. It is nerve wracking at first but it was one of the most fun maneuvers that we have done, and really good experience to have.

That pretty much wraps up my month at Riddle. I will be going home for fall break which is October 22, just a four day weekend, but long enough to see friends and family, and catch up on my brothers and his fiancés’ wedding. Again you can add me on facebook. Also, I encourage you to come to Embry Riddle’s Open House which is October 30. Here is the link to sign up and I also encourage you to join our official Class of 2015 group on Facebook.
Alex Munro, over and out!

My parents always told me that they never figured out what they wanted to do with their lives until they were well into college. I know personally several people who changed their majors 3 times in the span of a few months. Therefore, it was only natural to receive weird looks and snickers as a child when I knew exactly what to do with my life at such a young age.

I was born and raised in a country where violence is a daily occurrence and I spent 9 years of my life there. No, I’m not talking about the United States, but a far less known country in the middle of Central America–El Salvador. Although my parents always provided the best for my brother Luis (who is 5 years younger than I) and me, there was not much of an opportunity to move up the ladder. It came as a surprise to my mom and dad when I told them I wanted to do something related to the skies. My mother worked in Iberia as a saleswoman, and that was the closest anyone could get to the clouds without being a pilot. I don’t know exactly what pushed me in that direction. Maybe it was the thrill of the conquest of the unknown, and maybe it was just a secret desire to have been born as a bird.

In 2002, a breakthrough happened. My dad got offered a job in Miami, Florida. Our first apartment here, which was offered to him by his company for a few months, was located only a few miles from Miami International Airport. I delighted myself every night sitting on the balcony staring at the airplanes land, much to my mother’s disapproval, since we were so high up in the air. When it came time to buy our new house, I bothered my dad to be near airplanes. I guess it worked, since we ended up just 2 miles from Tamiami Airport.

Fast forward to the present, my family now lives in San Ramon, California (which is about an hour east of San Francisco). I stand where I always dreamed of being. I am an Aerospace Engineering major (my eyesight prevents me from being a pilot) at one of the best schools in the country. I have to admit, though, that Embry-Riddle wasn’t exactly my first choice. Neither my parents nor I had heard of this school–maybe since we had lived abroad for so long. After doing some research during my senior year, I narrowed my choices to 7 schools–SUPAERO in southern France, Georgia Tech, UTexas-Austin, UCF, UF, and Florida Institute of Technology and, of course, Riddle. After visiting most of these schools at the end of the fall, my pick became evident. Honestly, the campus did not catch my eye at first. It is a more suburban city than I was used to back in Miami, and the school itself is pretty small compared to the other state schools I was used to. However, after pondering on it for a while, and after visiting the amazing labs around, I couldn’t resist.

So far, I don’t regret my choice at all. You get to really know the people around you. The best advice I have is come to the open houses the campus offers in the fall and the spring (I believe they are held in October and April). I met some of the best friends I have in those days. Another great tip? Whatever school you decide on going to, Facebook-stalk your future classmates! Well, maybe just join the c/o 2015 pages that are cropping up around the net. Hands down, this is the best way to find others with the same interests as you do, and you never know! Your best friend might be just a click away!

P.S: Feel free to contact me with any questions you might have–whether you’re a girl seeking a friend (the “Riddle Ratio” is pretty evident–though most people you ask exaggerate it.), or you’re just seeking unbiased advice from a college freshman. My e-mail is up top (adrianaosegueda@hotmail.com), or you can also find me on Facebook (facebook.com/itsadri)

Hello! I would like to start by introducing myself. My name is Pete Greco, and I am a sophomore at Embry-Riddle in the Business Administration program, Air Transportation Concentration. I am honored to be able to write this and help give you some insight into the school and what it is like being a student here.

I was born in Connecticut and attended Hamden Hall Country Day School in Hamden, CT from 7th until 12th grade. Long before this time, however, I knew that I wanted to be involved in aviation. Early on in high school, I found out about Embry-Riddle from a friend of mine, and I quickly started to realize that it really is the school to go to if you want to be involved in aviation.

Coming from a small, private high school where I was the only person interested in aviation in the least bit, it was a huge change to enter Embry-Riddle and find people everywhere who were the same way. Whenever a jet would depart from Daytona Beach International Airport (which, as you may know, adjoins the campus), everybody’s head would look up to see what it was that had just departed. It really is a powerful thing for someone who loves airplanes as much as I.

My freshman year at Riddle was very exciting, to say the least. There are several other journals on this website that feature freshman writers, so I will not get too far into it, but I will say a few things. Firstly, if you are from the northern United States like me, you better love warm weather, because there is plenty of it here. Being someone who doesn’t do cold, I love this aspect of it. Other friends I know do not. I lived in McKay Hall, which I believe to be the best freshman dorm on campus. It features private bathrooms and doors that open up to a balcony—no need to go down stairs to be outside. I did not have my car freshman year, so that posed a few challenges, but you will quickly make friends that do have cars and who will drive you where you need to go. One thing that my friends and I enjoyed doing freshman year, and still do, is heading down to Orlando to visit Walt Disney World or Universal Orlando—even if just for dinner. One memory I still carry is from the very beginning of freshman year when we travelled down to Titusville to watch the night launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery. What an incredible sight and definitely one of the most amazing things I have ever witnessed in my 20 years.

Let’s jump ahead now to the present. One thing I do want to mention is that while I am a Business Administration/Air Transportation major, I am also a Flight minor. I conducted flight training at Embry-Riddle’s flight department and received my Private Pilot Certificate on April 6th, 2010. As a result, I also have insight into flying at Embry-Riddle. It is always a great time, even though occasionally it gets stressful and tense. In the end, however, you are receiving a very high level of training and training that is airline-oriented to prepare you for a future career. I will let the Aeronautical Science students on here explain this more to you, however.

I have wanted to be an airline pilot for as long as I can remember, In fact, my mother has found drawings I made in the first grade featuring a very poorly drawn Delta Air Lines Boeing 747 with the caption, “When I get older, I want to fly a Delta 747.” I still want to be a pilot, and am, however I have realized that the state of the pilot market at this point in time is not stable enough for me to put all of my eggs in one basket and I want to make myself more marketable and have more career options. As a result, I changed my major to Business Administration and picked up a flight minor. In my opinion, this prepares you better for life after college than a pure flight degree would. I intend to get all of my ratings and re-evaluate the market upon graduating. As I will describe later on, however, I have found another aspect of aviation that I love as much as flying, so I definitely have some decisions to make later on.

During my senior year of high school, I was fortunate to have an internship at my local airport in Connecticut, Tweed New Haven Regional Airport (HVN). At this time, I was still dead-set on being an airline pilot and was focused on only that. As a result, when I began the internship, I knew little about any other aspect of aviation besides flying. During my internship, though, I was introduced to a part of aviation that I always knew existed subconsciously but never made anything of it.

I am referring to Airport Operations. Any of you who fly at airports with commercial service will notice occasionally vehicles driving down the runways and taxiways conducting “inspections,” or shooting off pyrotechnics for wildlife control, but probably also don’t think much of it. What you see these individuals doing is only the visible part of the job, however. It is a job that is extremely detailed and one that requires a great deal of time and effort. Just as there are Federal Aviation Regulations that you must learn and abide to as pilots, there is a whole set of regulations that airports must abide by—specifically Part 139—and it is Airport Operations’ job to ensure that the airport and all people on it and using it meet these regulations. Essentially, you are in charge of every little thing that happens at the airport and make sure it runs smoothly on a day-to-day basis.

My internship opened my eyes to this and made me realize flying wasn’t the only way I could be actively, hands-on involved in aviation every day. So, my second aspiration became to work Airport Operations at a major airport.

This desire became a reality for me, partly, this summer. When I returned home, I got a call from Tweed airport stating that two of the Airport Operations Supervisors had left to pursue other jobs, and asking if I would work there for the summer, full-time, as one. I couldn’t believe the opportunity I was given: I would be able to work in a position that I was going to college for after only completing one year of school! As the summer went on and the airport administration saw my work, an offer was extended to me to return to Tweed every time I was home from college, and after I graduate. To top it off, they sent me to Chicago, IL for a week to attend the American Association of Airport Executives’ (AAAE) Basic Airport Safety and Operations School (ASOS). In addition, I was trained in Aircraft Rescue Firefighting (ARFF), as part of my job at Tweed, being a smaller airport, was to operate the $750,000 2007 Rosenbauer Panther 4×4 fire apparatus, pictured.

I have now moved back to Embry-Riddle and just finished getting settled in. I was lucky to have gotten the top floor of Apollo, the newest dorm on campus, at the far South end looking straight over Daytona Beach International Airport. The view is incredible; there isn’t a thing that you can’t see. Last year, my suitemate was lucky to have gotten number 24 in the housing lottery, so we essentially got our pick over dorms.

Since I have been back at Embry-Riddle, my friends and I have already had some great experiences. I believe that it is crucial to make the effort and to not just sit around all the time, or party constantly (although, as you will find, there is definitely time for that). Instead, you need to go out and try to meet as many people as you can. I know my friends and I do, which is why we are able to have so many awesome experiences. Last week, I went to one of my suitemate’s houses for dinner in Sanford, and on the way back to Riddle, we decided to stop by Orlando-Sanford international Airport. When we pulled to the FBO, we saw an F/A-18 crew chatting to some flight instructors in the lobby. We joined in on the conversation, and the next thing we knew, we were out on the ramp being shown the aircraft by the crew and watching them do a full-afterburner departure. What a sight.

Then, last weekend, my friends and I went to Walt Disney World outside of Orlando—something that (if you are anything like me) you will be glad to know is only about an hour away. We purchased Annual Passes, and already are planning to return there this coming weekend. We covered the Magic Kingdom and EPCOT, and this weekend we will go to the rest of the parks. The Universal Orlando Resort—featuring Universal Studios Orlando and Universal’s Islands of Adventures—are even closer, plus all of the other great attractions Orlando and the surrounding areas have to offer.

Well, I think you are pretty much all caught up on me! I am looking forward to writing for you all in the coming months, and please do not hesitate to e-mail me with any questions at all. I will be sure to keep you updated with everything going on with me!

Talk to you soon!

Pete

Hey everyone, my name is Alex Munro and I am so excited to be writing these journals so you can try to learn about my experiences here at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Since this is my first entry, I would like to start by letting you get to know me a little bit better.

Although I spent most of my life in my home state of Maryland, I was actually born in the United Kingdom, specifically Scotland. Growing up overseas, my passport saw a lot of miles. Some people don’t even fly until they are 10 or so. My first flight was when I was approximately 6 months old and once I was old enough to know what aircraft I was going on to get to my destination, I loved to visit the cockpit. You see before 9/11, kids were allowed to tour the cockpit, meet the captain, and even take some pictures. This even strengthened my interest for aviation. When I was six, I moved over to the United State and once here, my home town became Annapolis, Maryland’s capital. I attended and graduated from Broadneck High School in June 2010. Ever since the beginning of my senior year, I knew I wanted to go to Embry-Riddle. Quick story: one night, I searched; “best school to become a pilot,” and top result was Embry-Riddle. After that I did some research, fell in love, and decided to visit and tour the campus several times. While some students answered the question “Which college do you plan on going to?” as “undecided” or “not sure”, I responded confidently, “Embry-Riddle.”

My major is called Aeronautical Science and is one of the most popular majors here at ERAU. It’s a fancy name and when people hear it, they aren’t too sure what it is. In basic terminology, the major is “Professional Pilot.” With that major you have the preferable choice of flight. I’m guessing since you want to be a pilot, it would make sense that you should know how to fly. Embry-Riddle is great for it. Our flight line is right next to Daytona Beach International Airport. Planes are always flying when you go to class you will always here the noise of propellers turning or the roaring of engines. Now although I have traveled commercially on vacations, I had never been in the cockpit controlling the aircraft. So if you are planning on coming to Embry-Riddle and fly, make sure you love flying. Take a first lesson in your hometown, just so you know you will enjoy flying and won’t get motion sickness. I had my “discovery flight” and it was basically love at first flight. The sensation of seeing everything from the sky is amazing. Even better, you can brag to your friends. While they were studying Chemistry or History, you were flying over one of the most famous beaches with your shades on smiling and enjoying your “class”.

Zipping to the present, I am currently a freshman here at Embry-Riddle. It is my fourth week of classes and still in love and finding more and more reasons why I love this place. The move-in experience was great. You will be assigned to one of several dorms: Adams, Doolittle, Mckay, or Woods. I live in McKay which I believe is the best dorm, honestly, I could be biased but that’s our little secret. It’s older than the others but so much roomier. It used to be a motel and you only have to share your bathroom with one person, where in Doolittle, eight people to one bathroom area. During the move-in the staff was very helpful and the Orientation team, or the O-team as they like to be called, was amazing at planning events to get people mingling, informed, and to adjust to the college life. I hope to become part of the O-team next year Fall 2011, so maybe once your moved in I might be running down your hall, banging on your door, reminding you to come to the show.

Please feel free to email me at munroa@my.erau.edu or add me on facebook, www.facebook.com/ajmunro. I also have a twitter which you can follow me: www.twitter.com/itsalexanu I hope to update it more frequently of events on campus. Thank you guys for reading my story, I hope I didn’t bore you too much, and I would like to congratulate you guys on considering Embry Riddle as your future “nest.”

Sincerely,

Alex Munro