CHASING THE DREAM
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				So at some point in your young life you think to yourself...."self, it sure would be cool to be a pilot in the Air Force".  So you learn that you have to be an officer to be a pilot, you have to complete a commissioning program to be an officer and you have to have/get a bachelors to go through a commissioning program.  So you join ROTC and get a pilot slot and come to UPT.  If that works for you great...if you want more info about that path however, you'll need to look at somebody elses site, because I took a somewhat different path right about at the  -get a pilot slot in ROTC part.  Due to a bit of a medical mistake on my physical I lost a navigator slot coming out of ROTC, so I entered the Air Force as a services officer knowing that I really wanted the chance to fly.  That's when I heard about this active pilot board.  Turns out every year officers on active duty in any career field that will release them can apply for pilot training,.  Although the board is pretty selective (my year was 70 something out of 322) the process is relatively simple.  You have to pass a flight physical, have pretty good PCSM, AFOQT and BAT scores, and submit an application, along with recommendation letters.  I couldn't apply my first year because when I found out the deadline had passed.  The second year I had just returned from a deployment and didn't have the time or money to get my pilot's license.  A PPL isn't required technically, but since flying hours raise you PCSM pretty significantly it's pretty much is necessary.  The third year I finally had everything necessary for my package and because I had done OK in the job I had, I was able to get some pretty good letters of recommendation so I put my name in the hat and was lucky enough to have it picked. I think this might be one of the hardest roads to get to UPT, but for anybody in this situation I would offer the following adivce.  My first squadron commander told me that "you may have to bloom in a couple gardens you don't necessarily want to be in, to bloom in the garden you want."  This comes down to doing the best you can in your current job.  I almost took the wrong path when I got to my fork in the road because I was upset about not flying right out of ROTC.  Had I stayed on that path I probably would be getting ready to seperate from the Air Force to do who knows what instead of telling this story.  Instead I started trying to be the best (fill in the blank) officer I could be and since then things have worked out pretty good.  Now it's all about being the best student I can be, so that I can try to get those wings...bottom line corny as it sounds, never give up.