Originally Posted by Ace Rimmer
Some sober advice: If you've been "up a few times" and it was only "pretty fun" and not the the best thing you've ever done with your clothes on - (or off at your age!) then my friend, maybe an aviation career (and the hard work, disappointments, setbacks and so on and so forth) is not for you. If you don't love it, eventually you'll hate it.
You can always sell the headset on ebay...
I don't know, maybe it's just my personality type. I'm not a very excitable person. I definitely enjoyed it a lot and it was great to get out of the simulators and see everything in real life rather than just staring at a panel on my computer monitor.
You'll never know if you don't try, but only you can make the decision on whether or not to continue. If you are worried about the expense, why not leave it for a couple of years and see if you want to do it then? At 17, the world is your oyster and there are an awful lot of things to see and do, so why not have a look around at other options? If nothing else compares favourably to flying, then you can always come back to it.
This is some good advice. My only concern is that I always hear that I should really start early if this is what I want to do. I guess a couple years wouldn't hurt, though.
Find something else you can do and actually make good money. Then get a private license and have fun. Commerical aviation as a good professional career is dead.
It's a lot of stuff like this that's making me doubt all of this. Is this really true across the board or is it just a large amount of pilots that are unhappy?