IFR: Weeks 2 and 3

I must admit that the past few weeks have not been too heavily laden with IFR study time.  In fact, I think I've actually studied only a handful of days out of the past two weeks.  Case and point, this IFR work is much slower than what I had anticipated.  These past few weeks, I've found myself distracted by other things to keep me entertained- like a Nintendo DS and Wii.  And while I've been pretty lucky at collecting all of the Star Coins in Super Mario Bros on the DS and Wii, I can only tell you some stuff about an enroute IFR chart.



Study me!



This looks more fun!

The upside to this story is after reviewing the flight planning session, and starting to feel over my head, I decided to break the natural progression.  Usually, I check off the list topic by topic.  Breaking from this routine, I started looking at the IFR charts instead.  I figured it'd be better if I understood how to read and interpret those before looking at flight planning so I could at least understand a segment of the flight planning process. Again, after finishing over 150 questions, I felt exhausted, but felt like I had learned something.  I must admit that while I have still learned, the details are still quite fuzzy.

Getting down to it, I've become dissatisfied with my study process.  Clearly, this process isn't working as well as it has for me in the past.  Possibly because there is a lot of information to take in that is completely different from what was required for private pilot training, and possibly because I'm intimidated by everything so I just strafe away from it- a self discipline issue.

So now it's time to take a step back and reconfigure what needs to be done.  I've got a solution in mind, but I am currently waiting on the right things to fall into place.  If they do, I'm hoping this new strategy will be more effective than what I've used in the past.  The unfortunate side to this is having to spend more money for the training, but in order to meet my set goal, perhaps this is a necessary sacrifice.  I am still determined to pass my knowledge test first.  I still have my simulator waiting on me once I'm ready.  I am still hopeful, but to be honest, I wish this process were easier than what it is.