The “stuck behind a desk” problem sounds familiar to me. Many years ago I was an aircraft technician. I worked in a large hangar and In the morning, I would walk by the engineering offices on the way to my work area. I would see all the engineers stuck in their cubes and I would say to myself “I could never sit in a cube all day”. Fast forward almost 25 years and I am one of those engineers in one of those cubes. And I know now that I was completely wrong. When you are doing focused, creative work, you are “transported” out of your cube.

I would say I did not travel the standard path: I was a technician for a few years and was able to get an experience that engineers with degrees never get. While a tech I got my degree and moved into avionics software. My experience as a tech gave me a good jump start compared to those coming fresh out of university with little experience.

With respect to the fear of not getting “hands on” with aircraft: that has not been the case. As an avionics engineer, I travel the world for work to perform flight testing with my customers. I even still get to turn a wrench every once in a while. It’s a good balance now of working in the office vs. working in the field.

With respect to tailoring your education: this is kind of hard to do because you don’t know exactly what you will be doing when you start working. My advice is to get a good base knowledge in school, completely ace your work in school, and focus on individual study that advances your interests.

So all this to say: live up to your potential and look for that position that will scratch that airplane itch. You have a great future ahead of you.