OU freshman flies to first day of college in own plane
Ariel Pollard, an 18-year-old among more than 4,175 other OU freshmen, is setting herself apart by one thing: she flew her own plane to college. From Argyle, Texas, to Norman, Oklahoma, her Cessna 172’s propeller chopped through the air at 115 knots, or around 130 miles per hour, at 3,500 feet in the air.
The trip was about 150 miles and took her only an hour and 20 minutes — the farthest she has flown by herself. Pollard has been flying since she was 15 and received her pilot's license at 17, she said.
“I just love being in the air, it’s so much different than driving,” Pollard said. “I don’t know anything different from it, flying has just always been there my whole life.”
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Ariel Pollard, an 18-year-old among more than 4,175 other OU freshmen, is setting herself apart by one thing: she flew her own plane to college. From Argyle, Texas, to Norman, Oklahoma, her Cessna 172’s propeller chopped through the air at 115 knots, or around 130 miles per hour, at 3,500 feet in the air.
The trip was about 150 miles and took her only an hour and 20 minutes — the farthest she has flown by herself. Pollard has been flying since she was 15 and received her pilot's license at 17, she said.
“I just love being in the air, it’s so much different than driving,” Pollard said. “I don’t know anything different from it, flying has just always been there my whole life.”
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You know, even though I've been having a lousy semester already, this line here: “I just love being in the air, it’s so much different than driving,” just charms me. The sweetest of our students are so funny and neat you could never invent them, and I am sad that i don't remember ever being that innocent.
ReplyDeleteI had a student remarkably like this once. He had to turn down a flying job he was offered, since he didn't want the fact he'd be transporting strippers across country on his resume: the company's name was Bare Assets.
Deletethat's actually pretty cool.
ReplyDeleteIt's a nice change from helicopters!
ReplyDeleteI had a student a while ago who already had her pilot's license, and whose ambition was to go into general aviation (basically, piloting small jets for corporations, etc.) She was pretty cool, too.
ReplyDeleteOne of my grad school classmates, who hailed from Alaska, had had a pilot's license since almost before he had a driver's license (not uncommon in Alaska, where the distances are long and there are are towns that aren't connected to a road network). He didn't, however, own a plane, so he arrived on the east coast after a transcontinental trip in a VW bug. Still a reasonably cool way to arrive at grad school.
OU must have a pretty big campus to warrant a plane
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