"The long way"

A question I'm often asked is: "Have you always wanted to be a pilot?" The honest answer is "no". But I made the decision quite early, at the age of 16, and from then on I had this one goal in mind. The reactions to my request were very mixed: a few people supported it, most people laughed at it. Almost everyone knew someone who supposedly had applied at some point and failed... Maybe you feel the same way today? When I was 16, I said: "They have to hire someone, why shouldn't it be me?"
As motivation from then on, I imagined myself one day standing on the cockpit ladder of a Eurofighter and remembering the time when the cockpit of a fighter aircraft was still an almost unattainable dream. Ten years later this day came... This moment was one of the most emotional in my life.
If you have dreams, if you have set goals, believe in yourself and stick to them. It doesn't matter what other people think about it, it doesn't matter if they laugh at you, if they think your goals are nonsense. Believe in yourself, hold on to your dreams and don't let anyone distract you from your path.