Earning the A License

I got my A License a month and a day after my first jump. Twenty five logged jumps, a written test, a checkout dive with an instructor, and a pack job I stayed up too late finishing the night before. The license itself is a small card. The earning of it is not.

What an A License actually is, technically, is permission to jump alone. No instructor on your back. No instructor falling beside you. You exit the plane, you fly your body, you track away from the group, you deploy at your own assigned altitude, you fly your canopy, you land. The federation has decided you are the author of those decisions now.

I did not feel ready when they signed it off. I do not think anyone does. The thing about competence is it gets handed to you slightly before you would have given it to yourself.

I see a version of this in business. Founders waiting to feel ready to hire. Operators waiting to feel ready to delegate. People with companies they have been running for ten years still waiting for some signal that they are allowed to make the call. The signal does not come. You make the call, and the call makes the signal.

Twenty five jumps is not a lot of jumps. In the sport, A License holders are often called baby jumpers, and it is not unkind. It is accurate. There is so much I still do not know. I do not know how to fly a wingsuit. I do not know how to track a four way. I have never sat door on a Twin Otter at sunset. I have a long list of things I cannot yet do.

But the door of the airplane has stopped being a wall. It is a doorway now. That is what the license actually changes.

Everything I am going to learn in this sport is on the other side of that door. Same goes for the rest of life.