By: MaKalie Farmer
Junior Peter Nguyen received a 22,500-dollar scholarship for piloting due to his achievements in JROTC.
“We had to take an Air Force Qualification Test where we had requirements we had to meet physically and academically,” Nguyen said. “From there we were selected.”
Thanks to this selection, Nguyen will spend eight weeks at a university during the summer studying and training to become a pilot. He will be preparing six days a week for 10-12 hours every day.
“We’ve been trying for four years to get a cadet qualified for this scholarship,” Colonel Davidson said. “Now we finally have, and all the others know it’s possible.”
The Flight Academy providing these scholarships received about 1300 applications this year, however only about 230 cadets were chosen to receive the scholarship.
“Peter is a great kid, he’s a great leader,” Davidson said. “He does a good job of breaking stuff down and teaching color guard or any other activities we do.”
Once the eight weeks are over, Nguyen will be a certified pilot with roughly 11 hours of college credit. He has not yet decided if he wants to attend college and become an aerospace engineer or go directly into the Air Force as a pilot.
“ROTC helped me prepare for this,” Nguyen said. “We had after school practices where I did a bunch of studying and I physically worked my body out.”
Nguyen joined the ROTC program when he was a sophomore and quickly climbed the ranks.
“Thank you Colonel Davidson for helping me out and shout out to my ROTC cadets for their support,” Nguyen said.
