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Old 4th December 2002 | 12:56
  #7 (permalink)  
scroggs
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Joined: Dec 1997
: ATPL
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From: Suffolk UK
This is a perennial problem, and the answers don't get any easier to come by as time goes on!

You have to sort out your priorities, and you have to understand what opportunities and risks each course of action will bring you. Your priorities will include the basics, like food, shelter and enough dosh to buy a beer on a Friday, and should include things like fulfillment, satisfaction, and opportunities for improving your lot. Other priorities may be family, friends and boy/girlfriend or spouse, where you want to live and what your aim is in working at all. By that I mean, do you want comfort, challenge or whatever as your life-goal, and how much does it matter how you achieve that goal?

Having done that assessment (and it will take you a while!), you must then assess what each available route over the next couple of years will best fit your priorities.

Let's take an example. Let's say your real, deep-down life goal is security and comfort, with your friends and family around you. You'd like to achieve that through aviation but, having studied Pprune, you've begun to understand how precarious, mobile and insecure such a career is. Yet you believe that the rewards in aviation can still bring comfort, choice of location, and even security, in later life, so you are prepared to give it a go. You recognise, however, that the risks of failure are quite high, so you decide that a degree in a readily-saleable subject (law, commerce etc) would be a very good back-up to allow you to reach your comfort, security and location goals by another route.

An alternative aim might be just to fly - at any cost. If that's your goal, why bother with university unless you know that, by going, you will increase your chances of flying.

I'm sure you get the drift. There's no 'right' answer - it entirely depends on what you want out of life.
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