You may have read one of these posts before, where I'm like "that's it! I'm going to Sweden." (it was called For Sverige I Tiden), or "I'm going to join the Air Force/be a pilot!" or even, "OMG, I'm going to do a Master's degree."
Ha ha ha.
Ha ha ha.
I haven't done any of those things, but for the record, Aviation at Massey University is back on the cards. I had a lengthy discussion with the HOD of Physics at my current school, the University of Otago, before he signed me into the Physics major programme, and I didn't tell him that the *real* reason I want to take physics next semester is to boost my chances of acceptance into the flying programme. At new Zealand universities, you have to declare a major right from the word go. Personally, I find this a bit ridiculous, because it's a rare eighteen-year-old who knows precisely what they want to do. Sure, they know what they want to do at that point in time, but often declaring an English major ends in bitterness and heartache once said English major discovers that an English major isn't writing novels and poetry, it's ripping apart other peoples' novels and poetry. Or, if you're lucky enough to be admitted into the writing stream, it's having your life's work ripped apart. Fun. At Otago, there's the infamous "Health Sciences" stream, for first year students intending to study medicine, dentistry, physiotherapy or pharmacy. It's ridiculously competitive, and I'm told that last year, for admission to medicine, the GPA for Health Sciences was 93%. I'm going to go out on a risky limb here and say, you definitely don't need to be that intelligent to be a doctor. I've heard this from a number of graduates from the Otago Medical School. But I guess the rigors of first year are designed to weed out the weaklings who wouldn't otherwise survive Med School. It's natural selection, university style.
Anyway.
After many years of thinking (I'd love to tell you here that I sit on rocks and pull Socrates poses while I'm doing said thinking, but as a general rule I do it when I'm trying to sleep, which isn't that constructive. Sometimes I do it while I'm standing in line at Frankly Sandwiches), I have begun to reconsider an aviation-based career due to a number of contributing factors. First of all, I like to fly. I like travelling. I also like maps. A whole lot. In fact, Jelle recently introduced me to a game where you have to name 195 countries of the world in fifteen minutes. My best is 193. I left out goddamn Belgium and the Maldives, but that's beside the point. I like maps. And weather patterns - well, patterns in general. They're my IQ superpower. You probably also know that I love maths, and numbers - as demonstrated by my supersonic car registration plate memory, and my memorisation of Pi to 21 decimal places. Number patterns are even more fun. As far as I know, I was born to fly planes. (Yeah, okay so that might seem like a big departure - I like numbers so I should fly planes...) But I think the fact that this has been been a lingering desire for more than five years is also a good sign. It's not like the times where I've been like "WOW, I really like that Malaysian guy at the gym!" and then just as quickly forgotten about him when I get to the sushi bar and seen that they have crab sushi today. (Disclaimer: yes, my obsession with Malaysian guy from the gym may have lasted a little longer, and ended in rather dire circumstances, but it seemed like a good little anecdote. Here's hoping LMC has gotten something better to do with her time than collect damning evidence from my blog and Twitter these days.)
And anyway, I have an aviation-related back-up plan. You should always have a back-up plan, especially if you're pinning everything on being accepted into a postgraduate programme at a prestigious Dutch University. Was that too obvious? Anyway, I have also been looking into the fun world of air traffic control. It helps that my sister applied and was rejected (because we all know that I love to outdo people, especially family members who think that my life dramas should be talked through in the way that someone who calls Youthline before a suicide attempt is talked to), but again my love for numbers, patterns and planes may come in to play. Oh and, international aviation language? English. Thank god. Because we all know how scuh-rewed I would be if it was Japanese (here's a hint: I am so bad at Japanese that I didn't attend my final exam for it).
And anyway, I have an aviation-related back-up plan. You should always have a back-up plan, especially if you're pinning everything on being accepted into a postgraduate programme at a prestigious Dutch University. Was that too obvious? Anyway, I have also been looking into the fun world of air traffic control. It helps that my sister applied and was rejected (because we all know that I love to outdo people, especially family members who think that my life dramas should be talked through in the way that someone who calls Youthline before a suicide attempt is talked to), but again my love for numbers, patterns and planes may come in to play. Oh and, international aviation language? English. Thank god. Because we all know how scuh-rewed I would be if it was Japanese (here's a hint: I am so bad at Japanese that I didn't attend my final exam for it).
So that's the plan until further notice.
Just in case you were wondering.
0 comments:
Post a Comment