Ever since I was a kid, I had a passion for anything aviation. My aunt was in the Navy and my grandpa was a private pilot with a V-Tail Bonanza. I loved to be surrounded by people who shared the same passion as I had. When coming to Embry-Riddle, I knew I would be surrounded by a community of students and faculty who also loved aviation (since it is an aeronautical university), but I had no idea how tight-knit that community would be. Embry-Riddle is just a large family, with all its members having one common passion and drive: aviation. Not only is everyone pursuing a career in a similar field, but many also share the same extracurricular interests. By the third day of orientation, my suitemates and I built an airplane out of a broken printer we found in the dumpster (no we weren’t dumpster diving) and proceeded to launch it off our third story balcony.

Silly as it seems, the building and launching of the ‘printer plane’ started the formation of a strong bond between my suitemates and I, and made life long memories before school had even started! And the adventures aren’t limited to gliders created from old electronics; within two weeks I had built friendships with several other guys who shared my love for remote control aircraft. Since then, we have built combat airplanes, built and flown multirotors such as hexacopters and tricopters, have had plenty of crashes, and have made tons of memories.

It’s that sense of family that surprised me most about Embry-Riddle, and I think it’s a unique community you won’t find at any other university

If you’re interested in seeing the “Printer Pelican 1”, you can watch the video I made at this link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA1GviCfwlw