Obviously, Purdue is well known for it's reputation and tendency for producing pilots, engineers, and astronauts. Obviously. That's why I'm here. That's why I'm paying out of state tuition.
What isn't so apparent is the unspoken rivalry between Aerospace Engineers and Aviation Technology students (Aero vs. AVTech) on and off campus.
Basically, both are students with an insane and sometimes unfathomable curiosity and love for flying or aviation in some manner or form (There's Air Force ROTC too, but those guys are just plain crazy). Whatever the path, cost, or goal, students in both programs share this trait. Can't explain it. It's built in. It's what drives us.
On the surface, AVTech seems to get the better deal. Every day, they take a charter bus to the extreme western part of campus to the airport, where they eat, breathe, and sleep aviation at the Purdue Airport, take almost all of their classes there, and most importantly, can earn their pilot's liscence for credit. They work on airplanes, fly airplanes, physically test airplanes, and usually get to add quite a few hours of flight time to their logbooks.
Engineers, however, live entirely on campus. Expected to not only associate with, but befriend and hang out with *shudder* Liberal Arts majors. Engineers hardly ever go to the airport. They're stuck in a set of red brick buildings in the Engineering Mall with their noses in a book, slide rules/graphing calculators close at hand, calculating, studying, and working. The closest they get to airplanes is seeing them fly overhead, every day. Sometimes, you can spot the Aero Engineers because they always look up at the airplanes, instead of watching where they're going. *blush* They spend all day drawing airplane wings and studying the physics behind airflow design. They spend evenings calculating vibrations and friction on wing surfaces. They spend weekends studying calculus, physics, engineering, and MATLAB.
So the question becomes why? Why would anybody bother with aerospace engineering if all you do for four years (even five, perhaps) is study? All those long nights of homework, and usually not a single hour in the logbook?
The engineers, it turns out, are taking a gamble. Counting on putting four more years of hard work and study in while everybody else is flying and having fun. In the end, our day comes when we finally get to our real job. That is, working with the biggest and fastest airplanes. Getting to work with the really cool stuff, the stuff on the edge. Basically, we're working harder now to go higher and faster later. Think about it- AVtech gets to fly Cessnas now, and Citations and Boeings later at best. We get to study now, and work with high performance jets and spacecraft later.
And that's a risk I'm willing to take.
Still, for a simple Freshman Engineer, I do have a few little experiences and things that translate roughly into "street credit" among pilots here. I've got the aviator sunglasses. I've got my headset. I have hours in my logbook (somewhere in the 30s). I've soloed my aircraft. My home airport is Clermont County, home of the legendary Sporty's Pilot Shop. I personally know Hal Shevers, Purdue pilot and founder of Sporty's.
So I leave you with this selection from an article found in AOPA Flight Training Magazine, July '04:
"Solo! It's a simple word that alone doesn't mean much. How important can a word be if it means only "one" or "by yourself" or a variation thereof? When you're learning to fly, however, the word should be written SOLO!!!! and deep-throated bells should be ringing with Wagner's "Ride of the Valyries." In aviation, the word has dramatic overtones that the rest of the world can't begin to understand."
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Education over there seems intimidating. Very serious and what not. From where i am doing marketing and advertising, it seems a little scary..
ReplyDeletePerhaps. But I simply cannot remove my own bias from this post, and as we all know...I take everything too seriously, am very driven, and generally have more passion for what I do than most people I know.
ReplyDeleteAnd I miss flying.
You definitely are driven
ReplyDelete