I can see the light

Current Mood: crankin' these out while I can

I'm juuuuuuust about done with half of my "junior" year. Scratch that. I have 1 and a half years left before I (hopefully) finish my first undergrad Purdue degree and then I plan on being done with school. For good. Forever. Until I can convince a company to put me back in school and get an advanced degree :)

Classes are going pretty well. My first few semesters were straight As, and now I've dropped in a few Bs. Still pretty good, though. And the classes are getting harder and I have work, so I'm not beating myself up too bad.

I don't feel like the classes are fluff anymore, either. I'm starting to really get into the "meat" of the curriculum, and I feel like I already know 1000% more about airplane stuff than I did. Granted, I still have a ways to go, and I'll have to recall it all for my FAA A&P exam at the end that costs like $600 and is a 5 day oral/written/practical...but more on that later.

Because I had so much transfer credit from my previous life as an engineer:

A) I am a super duper senior with a victory lap, so I get to schedule first, awesome
B) I'm super old and married and sometimes that's weird
C) I don't have to take any more than about 13 credit hours (12 being the minimum) from here on out*

*so what do I do? I'm working, for one, plus I'm probably going to end up being a TA at some point, PLUS I've decided to sign up for an additional course on aviation fuels, another experimental course where I get to job shadow airplane mechanics at the nearby general aviation repair facility, and next year I might take Air Traffic Control classes...just because?

I think I have more desire/interest in EVERYTHING about this major than any one thing. I'm not the best riveter or wrench turner, but by the time I'm done I'll have had a little bit of everything. Here's hoping I can translate that into some job, somewhere, for somebody? Ideally a big aero company like Boeing or Lockheed.

This major is so much smaller than engineering, and everybody is so nice (nobody's graded on a curve, and I think that's part of it? Plus with work, I'm there ALL the time and see students and professors more than I would normally, methinks). And, strangely, the other day I felt a little strange thinking about how people will soon be graduating! Rabon, for instance, only has one more semester, geez. Where does the time go? Here I am, complaining about being so old and yet, everybody's supposed to stay the same? Ugh.

I'm way more connected to my professors than I ever was in engineering. Again, probably partially because of work, but it's pretty cool when they say hi to me by name in the hallways. And I get to use work with my hands and rivet and weld and light stuff on fire in lab. So that's pretty cool too.

For the most part, I'm pretty happy with my major switch. I just wish I had done it sooner...