We Can Fly!
Play the song You can Fly from the movie Peter Pan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8cVeF0Nksk
On Thursday, March 1, 2007, Rachel and I went to the Aerospace engineering building to experience the flight simulators in the WRW building. I wrote about my discovery and desire to fly in a previous post about how I am my own professor. We finally got to fly with the help of a graduate student named Ash, who TA’s the flight simulation program.
Although we were liberal arts undergraduates who will
probably never “fly” again, Ash truly just helped us fly the plane and
understand 
the
basics. Flying was quite difficult. There were two simulators: one that did not
move but had a visual screen and one that moved but only had flight
instruments. Flying the motionless one was quite easy, however, when I flew the motion flight
simulator, I ended up crashing miserable into the ground.
Through my flying experience, I leaned how difficult it is to fly because you have to be coordinated in a three dimensional space—sort of like an x, y, z coordinate. However, Ash informed us that nowadays, autopilot can take off, fly to a destination, and land without having a pilot. I found that really interesting because even though a computer can control and fly the plane, the human aspect is still vital. Relating this to the idea of hero and compassion, the human aspect is one of the most important part of showing compassion. Dass talked about how often times, people want to fit in to the roles of helper or helped. However, like flying a plane, you can’t always rely on autopilot to guide you through life. Rather, you’ve got to make your own decisions that you feel are the right decisions and stick by them. In expressing compassion for others, we sometimes get into routines. Such routines are detrimental to expressing compassion because it takes out the human quality.
From our flying experience, I also learned about intuition
and trust. The motion simulator 
that
did not have a screen was difficult because I had to fly only by reading the instruments.
If you overlook one thing or misread something, you could end up nose-first in
the ground. (Like what happened to me.) Ash mentioned an instruments-only test
they do in the air force where they spray paint all the windows in the cockpit
black and have the pilot fly the plane using only the instruments. I was
someone shocked by this idea. Relating this to our class, our class focuses on
bridging our right and left brains together, combining photos with words. It is
interesting how in flying, they test skill by forcing pilots to concentrate on
one skill thus, effective honing that skill. Likewise, in our world lit class,
it would be interesting to have to construct an essay or express our thoughts
through only pictures.
Anyways, our flying experience was very fun and exciting. I
am certainly glad that I took learning into my own hands and decided to fly the
flight simulators in the aerospace engineering building. I wonder is in-store
for me next here on campus and in