Hello!

So after some lovely problems with websites and who-knows what else, I'm back! Since it's been a while, I figure I should kick things back off with an introduction. Of course, my name is Karrie Shank. I'm a 24 year old graduate student at University of Central Missouri (UCM) where I'm a flight instructor, and also work teaching classes on campus and producing the department's monthly newsletter. I've been teaching at UCM for about a year and a half, and before that, I taught for about three years at Ohio University.

In total, I've been flying for about 8 years. I got started through the Young Eagle's program (of course). I wanted to be an architect starting in about fifth grade, and that lasted till my junior year of high school, when I went to visit a college I was thinking about going to. The visit... well, let's just say it scared the bejeebies outta me! All the talk about how I was going to spent sooo many years in school, working all night long a lot of the time, and would have a really hard time getting a job... it was enough to spook any sane person! So that trip was also the first time I'd ever gotten on an airplane.

So somewhere around there, I decided that architecture wasn't quite as cool as I'd hoped, so I started trying to figure out what else I wanted to do. It had never occured to me that people actually flew airplanes for a living (after all, nobody gets to do anything that cool AND get paid to do it, right??) but the more I checked it out, the more excited I got! So when a friend at school's mom gave me the email address for a friend who flies for Midwest Express (nice airline that serves awesome warm chocolate chip cookies!) I started talking to Kris about how to get started. He told me I needed to go for a flight in a small airplane, since they can be a lot different from airliners (think about the difference between riding in a school bus versus a really tiny car), and he told me about the Young Eagle's program. I called the national headquarters, and they gave me the phone number for the guy in my area who was in charge of Young Eagles flights, Al Moyer.

Al and I went for a flight from a nearby county airport a couple weeks later. He showed me how to preflight, explained all the instruments, and what made the airplane turn, climb, and bank. We took off, and I was pretty much hooked on flying before we ever even left the ground! Al also invited me to the next EAA meeting... where they elected me as secretary the first time I ever showed up! I guess they decided it was a good way to keep me comming back and would help me learn everyone's names. It worked. At about the same time, I'd started working at a pizza restaraunt. When I told my parents I wanted to be a pilot, they said, "Ok, prove it to us." because they thought it was just a "summer thing" and would probably pass. So I took the money I was making at the pizza restaraunt, went back to the airport where Al took me flying, and signed up for flight lessons! I even flew some of my lessons in the same airplane Al had taken me for my young eagles flight in. So a fast 22.5 weeks (Al counted it up) after that first flight with Al, I was was a fully certified private pilot. My checkride (the test that gets you your pilot certificate) was the day before Thanksgiving, during my senior year of high school. Considering my age, it was kinda a big deal, and even made the front page of the newspaper.

I kept flying on my own until I started college. I took family members, friends, even my boss from work flying. Of course, Al was my first passenger. Fall of 2002, I started at Ohio University, where I got the rest of my certificates. I'm now a single and multi-engine pilot, instrument rated, and am a flight instructor, instrument instructor, multi-engine instructor, advanced ground instructor, and instrument ground instructor. In plain english, what that means is I can fly any airplane as long as it doesnt have jet engines or weigh more than 12,500 lbs (which is a lotta airplane!). I can fly them in clouds too. Anything that I'm allowed to do, I'm also allowed to teach people to do. I can also teach the ground courses you have to take in order to be a pilot. I graduated from Ohio University in 2007, and from there, I moved to Missouri (where I am now) and started working on a master's degree at UCM. You don't need a second degree to be a pilot, I just had some things I wanted to learn more about, and this was a great way to do it.

Ok, I feel like I've just written a small book! Just like with the old blog, I'd love to hear from you. So if you've got questions you want to ask, just email me or leave me a comment on here, and I'll do my best to answer them! my email address is kes90220@ucmo.edu.