Flight

I was reading Jonah Lehrer's How We Decide when one of our medical students asked me for help. That student has to take another half year remedial class before graduation. Dare to call remedial school term a "final sentence," and you're likely to hear exasperated moans and groans from the students.

I couldn't help thinking of Lehrer's near-death experience as a pilot. On a rainy fall day, beneath clouds so grey that dawn bled into evening, he was at seven thousand feet and his plane's left engine was on fire. He didn't know what to do.

He knew he could increase the speed but wasn't sure if the only remaining engine can handle the climb. What's the alternative? Well, he could steepen the descent and let the downward momentum steer the plane. Or so he thought. But, alas, he might not be able to regain control and fall into what pilots call a graveyard spiral. His knees buckled and his shoulders slumped, like a marionette's with the string released.

About thirty seconds passed, and Lehrer was still thinking. The clock was ticking. It was such a life-or-death scene that you would think you could not go back. But then it wasn't. It was only a flight stimulator that pushed Lehrer's vein awash with adrenaline.

We may not always know exactly what a pilot feels, why a pilot does what he does, or feels what he feels. But that's exactly what a medical student would face in a disastrous final examination. Gosh, it's about either safe landing or crashing. Everything goes faster and faster until the mayhem takes over, pushing a desperate student into a horrifying nosedive, or what we call a downward spiral.

Yes, yes, that's terrifying.

And then, if you think more about it, that's merely a flight stimulator exercise. That won't kill a single passenger sitting in the cabin, and not even the pilot.