My First Week at Andrews
As a maintenance student at Andrews, I'm in class eight hours a day, five days a week. I have five classes: science for aerospace technicians, electrical systems, regulations and publications, aircraft materials and processes, and metal structures. While there are lots of boring parts of the classes, there are also many interesting things!
During the first week, we learned how to move airplanes around using the regular tow bars and the electrical tow (which is always broken). I've also learned how to calculate the exact amount of metal required to bend a piece of sheet metal based on its thickness, radius of bend, and the required lengths on each end, so that no metal is wasted. Once my tools are ordered and arrive, we will start to actually manipulate sheet metal! We use mostly aluminum.
There are five students including me in the first four classes, and in the last class of the day, the returning students come to learn the airframe portion of their program (Airframe and Powerplant classes switch off every other year), so there's about twelve of us. I am the only girl in all of these classes, but I'm getting along with everyone :)
I've started to get used to the schedule and have joined a kickboxing class at the gym. All in all, college is exhausting, but I think I will learn a lot over the coming months.
