Maybe I should clean up my image a bit.

Appearances are everything in life. At work people assume I’m competent because I act confidently. I will 100% absolutely assure my boss I can do something, then walk out her office and exhale slowly and at length before figuring out how the hell I’m going to pull it off*.

After a good flying lesson now, I occasionally allow myself to dream of a time where I may actually pass that elusive flight test. So I need to start thinking about the image I present. No examiner is going to be impressed by a candidate who curses every second word and thinks that hissing “geddown-you-bitch” is a mandatory part of a stall recovery procedure.

I get the impression that you do your best on your flight test if you treat it just like an ordinary lesson.  Maybe I need to start treating an ordinary lesson a bit more like a potential flight test. I need to be careful that the sardonic humour that I originally used to deflect from my sheer terror doesn’t become a bad habit in the cockpit. Now would be a good time to start developing good habits.

Who knows, maybe if I act like a proper pilot, the examiner might be fooled into thinking I am one!

 

* I usually manage. I have quite the reputation as a wheeler-dealer, mostly because I am utterly shameless in what I’ll ask companies to do for me!