Estimated Time of Arrival

Slow flight over the Golden Gate Bridge.

December 2016 - San Francisco, California

FLIGHT PLAN

Let’s take a flight from Merrill Field Airport to Fairbanks International Airport. Let’s file a flight plan. First things first, we decide our estimated time of departure (ETD). Next, what is our estimated time of arrival (ETA)? Well, we will have to do some calculations and work forwards from our ETD. The flight is 256 statute miles, my cruising speed is 120 miles per hour, which means it will take 2 hours and 8 minutes. Perfect. So if we leave at 10:00, we will be there at 12:08. Easy! 

“If it’s so easy, Bright, what’s this story about?” Well, first of all, there’s 3 stories here, but you’ll have to read to the end to find out what they all have in common.

STORY #1: RETURN TO HOME BASE

I grew up with a unique opportunity most kids don’t get. My dad was a private pilot with his own airplane. I had the privilege of exploring California from the air and spending time playing on the tarmac while my dad worked on the airplane. Flying was a huge part of my dad’s identity: his way to destress after a long day of work, his favorite means of exploring, his favorite passion to share with family and friends.

In 2011 during my first year of college, I received a phone call where my dad told me he had prostate cancer. Throughout the years that followed, many of the conversations I had with my mom and dad revolved around my dad’s diagnosis and his pilot license. My dad was certain he would have to give up his license. Every other phone call, he threatened that he would sell his airplane. The next phone call would be my mom begging me to do something to keep him from selling it.

I panicked after every phone call believing that it was my responsibility to solve the problem. I couldn’t let my dad sell the airplane. What would happen if he did? Even if I had been clever enough to come up with ideas to help my dad, the only solution that both of my parents seemed to accept was that I would get my pilot license. That would keep him from selling his airplane. I would be his designated pilot-in-command so he could legally fly even if his license wasn’t current.

Summer 2014.

I successfully finished my junior year of college and was returning home to Northern California for the summer. This was an important summer. I had worked all year as a tutor and saved up money to do my flight training. I intended to complete my private pilot license (PPL) before returning to college in a short 3 months. My whole family and my family’s friends rejoiced that I would finally save the family legacy.

My dad and others in the aviation community would boast the 40 hours, the legally required number of hours, it took them to complete their license. Forty hours! However, I was warned by my instructor that it typically took more than that these days due to the level of proficiency now required. Maybe 60 hours would be reasonable. I should be done this summer, no problem. One summer and 60 hours. That’s what it should take.

That was the most stressful summer I had ever been through yet. Flying didn’t come naturally to me despite my years as a passenger with my dad. My instructor had little patience for my foibles, the timeline was aggressive, and my measly funds from tutoring were miniscule. On top of it all, I worked a paid engineering internship 30 minutes one way from the airport and a volunteer engineering internship 1.5 hours in the opposite direction. 

I made it through around 40 hours of training before my instructor informed me that my dad’s airplane was not properly equipped to finish my training. Up to this point, I had only flown in my dad’s incredibly well-maintained, low-engine time airplane. Switching to a rental airplane made me feel like I was back at Square 1. Everything rattled, and non-critical, but required, instruments were always breaking.

I had two weeks left of my summer and my instructor warned me that I wasn’t ready to take my checkride, but I didn’t feel like I had a choice. Everyone in my family and the little aviation community was depending on me.

The checkride day finally came. The only Designated Pilot Examiner (DPE) available when I needed one was unknown to my instructor. Typically, flight instructors will try to pick DPEs for their students that they know well so they can better prepare their students for the proficiencies that the DPE will likely ask them to demonstrate. 

I set my alarm very early to meet my DPE. I flew to a much bigger airport with air traffic control (ATC) where I had flown in and out only a handful of times. After landing and parking, I fumbled my way through a building I had never been in before. I’m sure I was shaking from the moment I left the house to the time I met the DPE a few hours later. 

He ushered me into a small conference room where we would do the oral exam. Although I cannot recall the words he said to me, I do remember that this DPE never did anything to put me at ease. He seemed to be looking for ways to stump me asking me harder and harder and more obscure questions. Despite this, I passed the oral exam, but he offered me no words of encouragement. He rushed me to get the plane ready for the flying portion of the exam. He stood to the side with his arms crossed, squinting at me and occasionally checking his nails impatiently.

I am certain I did the most thorough preflight inspection I’ve ever done in my life, afraid he might tell me that the Federal Aviation Regulations required that I stare at the brake pads for at least 5.2 seconds and that I had failed for only giving them 4.9 seconds of my attention. 

Once we had gone through all of the tower communications and we were in the air, he wasted no time in trying to stump me again. He put me “under the hood”, giving me a pair of glasses (also known as “foggles”) with all peripherals blurred. The intent of these “foggles” is to keep you from looking outside and to teach you how to rely on your instruments to fly the plane. This is to simulate being in the clouds or a very low visibility condition where you cannot use the ground to navigate. Normally, this isn’t too difficult. I did the various maneuvers he asked me to do without issue. Next, he asked me to triangulate my position using the VOR. My heart sank. Somehow he had picked my greatest weakness and made it 10 times harder than I had ever practiced. I had never done this under the hood. I now had to monitor all of my instruments, keep us on course, continue communicating with ATC, draw on a map on my lap, switch the radio frequencies multiple times, and do it quickly enough that my triangulation would still be accurate by time I was done.

I became so overwhelmed that I started to drift off course. Simultaneously, ATC started asking for our plans. I couldn’t respond. I felt frozen. After ATC’s second failed attempt to reach me, it was over. The DPE told me to return to the airport. I had failed. The whole ride back he gave me an in-depth analysis of everything I did wrong.

I stayed at the big airport for a while to regain my composure before flying back to my home airport. I taxied past the fuel pumps and the airport manager came running out to greet me with a huge smile on his face. I shook my head as tears streamed down my face. I saw his smile evaporate. As I taxied up to the flight school, I was greeted by my instructor. He helped me put my plane in the tie-down and we debriefed on what had happened. I could feel every ounce of his disappointment. I had let him down. I had let my mom and dad down. I had let everyone down.

STORY #2: HEADWINDS

August 2015. 

I arrived in Fairbanks, Alaska, bright-eyed (no pun intended) and bushy-tailed with a hint of anxiety knowing that I was not enrolled in a single class even though I was supposed to start graduate school at the end of the week. My advisor assured me it would be easiest to get it all figured out once I had arrived in Fairbanks. Despite my skepticism, I was excited to start grad school to get my Master’s degree in Environmental Engineering, a process that would take 2 years. Two years. That’s how long it’s supposed to take.

2016.

Surprise surprise, my class schedule had worked itself out two semesters in a row. Even though I drowned in my class load and being a brand new teaching assistant for a class of over 100 students, I was enjoying being a grad student. What hadn’t really worked itself out was my research. As part of my Master’s degree, I was required to conduct research, write a thesis, and defend it, but I still lacked clarity on what my research would be. My committee had already roped me into all kinds of field work, lab work, and computer work. I was free labor like any good grad student. 

As time went on, I was able to better define my research, but I was still pulled left, right, and all over the place. I struggled to advance my research as pressures from committee members built and my project grew in size.

A friend of mine had started his Master’s degree a year earlier, so he should have been getting close to completing his degree. However, it was clear that he wasn’t close. I remember thinking, “I won’t let that happen to me.” I was going to be done in 2 years. That’s what it should take.

May 2017.

By the time my fourth semester was coming to a close, I was wrapping up the last of my classes, and I was pushing my committee to let me wrap up my field work. I spent hundreds of hours in the lab analyzing my hundreds of water samples and conducting my soil pressure tests. I had an absurd amount of data but had done little with it yet and hardly any writing. So I decided I would finish up with the summer semester. That should be enough time to reduce my data to something meaningful and to write my thesis, right? 

June 2017.

As a precaution, I started applying for engineering jobs in Anchorage, where I would be moving when the summer was over to go live with my boyfriend. Everyone said that it would take at least a few months to get a job. I watched some friends really struggle to find jobs. I didn’t want to be stuck without one when I was finished with my degree. 

Before the month was out, I was offered three interviews. Before July could come, I was offered a job. I tried to postpone my start date, but my new employer was adamant that I needed to start as soon as possible. So I did.

The Rest of 2017. 

I dove into the job. I put in my time. I came home exhausted every day. I had no desire to work with my data and write. My thesis dragged on.

2018. 2019.

Life got in the way. I would go in 2 or 3 month bursts where I would get home from work and actually try to make progress on writing my thesis, but it was always torture. I never seemed to have enough left in the tank. Month after month, year after year, my parents, my friends, and my employers would ask me when I would be done until they stopped asking and started making jokes. 

Though I had been hopeful at the beginning of my grad school career, I had since learned that a huge portion of students actually took much longer than 2 years. My friend that I had once criticized had long graduated with his Master’s by now and moved on to his PhD. Despite the many stories of others taking longer than 2 years to finish their Master’s degrees, I still felt an incredible amount of shame that I STILL wasn’t done. I was on 4 years. How stupid could I be?

Story #3: Thunderstorms

Let’s rewind back to a younger Bright.

2010.

The end of my high school career was fast approaching and college applications would soon be upon me. One day, I had the opportunity to meet with an environmental engineer at a local engineering firm. After a short hour of talking to the engineer, I was in love. I knew what I was going to do for the rest of my life. Go to school for engineering, work as an engineer-in-training for 4 years, become a professional engineer, and someday open my own engineering business.

May 2014.

I was in my 3rd year of college. My friends and I gathered in the study rooms in our apartments for weeks leading up to the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) Exam. Aside from going to school and getting a degree in engineering, the FE is the first mile marker in your journey to becoming a licensed professional engineer (PE) in the United States. Everyone in my little study cohort passed their exam. We ditched class, went to Disneyland, and rejoiced. But this was just the beginning of the journey to becoming a PE.

July 2017.

The clock started on my next PE milestone. I started my first job working under a professional engineer. I would need to do this for 4 years (or only 3 years once I completed my Master’s degree). This is a crucial piece of the PE journey. When you apply to become a professional engineer, other engineers that you work for will sign a paper verifying what type of work you did and for how long and if they believe you are qualified to be a professional engineer. 

Late 2019.

Somewhere near the end of 2019, I was assigned a new supervisor. She was someone I had been working around for a while. I was pretty nervous to work for her knowing she was quite intense and I was her first direct report, but it was a major bonus that she was a professional engineer. She would be able to sign off on my experience, no problem. 

2020.

In May 2020, I had my first annual review with my new supervisor. The feedback was phenomenal. She and my former supervisor were happy with my work and the initiative I was taking in business development.

Later in the year, I made sure to check that she was still ok with signing off on my engineering experience. She indicated that she would, but only for the work she had managed directly. This took me a bit by surprise. Most of the work I did was for other project managers, which meant I would need to go back to the drawing board for some of my experience. This was a minor setback, but I figured I could make it work.

2021.

Take a short hop and skip back to my first ever blog post (“Waiting for Clearance”), and you will be reminded of how 2021 started off for me. I fell prey to extreme anxiety and struggled to function in life and at my job. During my annual review in May, my supervisor made sure to humiliate me as much as possible. After recovering my composure, I approached her and reminded her that I would soon be applying to take my Professional Engineering Exam and that I wanted to double check that she would still sign off on the work I had done directly for her. 

I will always remember, clear as day, what she said to me: “I’ll sign off, but I won’t recommend you. You are NOT fit to be an engineer. What makes you think you deserve to be an engineer?” She might have kept talking, but I don’t remember. I walked out of her office, empty inside. Everything I had been working for since I was 17-years-old seemed to have been flushed down the drain. There was no way I was getting licensed in 4 years, maybe ever. Maybe I didn’t even want to be an engineer.

CHANGE OF PLANS

I’ve always been that odd kid who could boast that she knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life. I knew all my goals and exactly when I was supposed to reach them. I had a grand plan for my life and I worked very hard to keep it on schedule, but when adulthood hit, it became clear that the universe didn’t really care about my timelines. I took each and every break in my timeline as a huge hit to my self-worth. I wondered at many points along the way if I even had a clue what I wanted anymore or if I knew who I was. 

TOUCHDOWN

Summer 2015.

After graduating from college, I dove back into flight training for the second summer in a row. It was, yet again, a tight schedule. I felt like I had to relearn how to fly. I had only flown a few times since last summer. This time, my instructor and I focused on my weak areas. 

We picked a new DPE, but again, neither of us knew what to expect, but this DPE came to my home airport. What a relief. I sat for my oral exam. This time, it felt like there were no trick questions. I felt much more at ease than last time. I passed the oral exam with no trouble. 

I, again, did a thorough preflight inspection on the plane, but I could actually hear the noises of the airport over my own thoughts this time. We got in the airplane, did a soft field take-off, and headed out to do some maneuvers. 

Shortly after takeoff, however, my DPE noticed the exhaust gas temperature gauge wasn’t working. My checkride came to a quick halt, but this time, it wasn’t because I had done anything wrong. 

A week later, after the gauge was repaired, we tried again. This time I was in the routine. I was ready for the DPE to put me under the hood, make me triangulate my position with the VOR, make me do steep turns and stalls, short field and soft field landings. I was ready for everything. He started me off with some navigation and a little bit of work under the hood. Then we did some slow flight work.

Suddenly, he said, “Let’s head back.” 

My stomach dropped. What did I do? I thought I was doing everything right. How did I mess up this time? I turned the plane and set my GPS back to my home airport. 

I waited a few moments before sheepishly asking, “What did I do wrong?” 

He chuckled, “Nothing! You passed as long as we make it back to the airport safely.” 

Confused, I asked, “You don’t want me to do any maneuvers?” 

He chuckled again, “You want to do some maneuvers? Fine. Go do turns around a point. Use that tree as a reference.” 

I complied and did the maneuver. 

“Good job. Let’s head back now.”

We landed and I put the plane in its tiedown grinning from ear to ear behind my aviator sunglasses.

March 2020.

A new senior engineer joined my company. She was the most effervescent person I had ever met and she brought so much positivity to an office that was otherwise full of doom, gloom, and criticism. 

She quickly tried to take me under her wing. Though she couldn’t offer me much work, she was able to provide me with much needed encouragement to start working on my thesis again. I began the grueling effort all over again, but this time I didn’t stop.

July 2020.

I stared at my computer monitor in my home office. My heart was pounding as I saw people joining the Zoom meeting. One by one, my committee members joined. A couple other professors and a few friends joined as well. After 5 years, I had finished writing my thesis, a document of more than 100 pages, and gained all the necessary approvals. Now, these people had gathered to listen to me defend my research.

Forty-five minutes passed and I finished presenting. You’d think this would be a moment of relief, but the hardest part was yet to come. Now it was time for my committee to grill me with questions. I think it was less than 30 minutes, but it felt like hours. 

August 2020.

I finally graduated with my Master’s degree in Environmental Engineering.

January 2023.

I had just woken up in a tiny little cabin in Flagstaff, Arizona. I climbed down from the cramped loft and stared out the glass-paned front door at the fluffy white snow and the golden color of the sunny day ahead of me. 

The week before, I had taken my professional engineering exam, an 8-hour long exam which was the last milestone in becoming a PE. I had studied for months. I had even postponed my test once before finally taking it. In the year prior, more than 10 people endorsed my engineering capabilities and experience. It hadn’t been easy to track everyone down after all these years, but it had been worth it and I was so thankful to those that agreed to sign.

I had joked that this trip to Arizona was my celebratory trip. If I passed my test, great. If I didn’t, at least I had a fun trip. I quickly got dressed and ate some leftovers from the night before. I brushed my teeth and scrolled around on Instagram and checked my email. My heart stopped when I saw an email from the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying. I spit the toothpaste in the sink and wasted no time opening my account and logging in. 

Subtle, but distinguished, was the little green box that said “Passed.” I shouted and squealed and danced around the little cabin.

HAVE YOU CLOSED YOUR FLIGHT PLAN?

When filing a flight plan and estimating your time of arrival, there’s a lot to consider. As pilots, we are taught to consider wind direction and speed at different altitudes, magnetic variation, fuel stops, etc. Even then, there’s still often delays that we cannot anticipate. 

Maybe one of our critical instruments fails and we have to return to home base to fix it. Maybe the headwinds are stronger than all of our weather sources predicted. Maybe there’s a thunderstorm moving right into our path and we have to go around it. Maybe we flat out made a mistake in our calculations.

Or maybe… get this… maybe we see something really cool along the way and we just want to go off our path and take a better look. Maybe we even want to land at an airport that wasn’t in the plan and take a walk to the only burger joint in town for lunch.

OR MAYBE… you realize you never wanted to go to Fairbanks International Airport anyway. Cancel the flight plan and go somewhere else.

No matter what the cause of the delay is, it doesn’t mean you failed. In fact, it could be quite the opposite.

It never occurred to me that the world wouldn’t end if I didn’t get my pilot license that summer. The world wouldn’t have ended even if I never got it. Even if I had decided I didn’t want it. It never occurred to me that if it took me more than 2 years to get my Master’s degree that it didn’t really matter how long it took. It never occurred to me that if I had to take a different path to get my Professional Engineering license, that it didn’t make me any less of an engineer. And if I had walked away from engineering all together, it didn’t make me less of a person.

So many times in my life, I have been so focused on the one right way, the straight line, to get from Point A to Point B. The reality is, though, that I have zig-zagged my way to just about every meaningful success I have had in my life. Many times, I had no clue how I was going to get there. And many times, I canceled the flight plan and decided I wanted to go somewhere else entirely.