Arvenski said:
So I met with a flight instructor the other day, and hopefully started to get the ball rolling on learning to fly. He said he'd check his schedule and email me with a time for a preliminary lesson, and that I should let him know if that time would work for me. He emailed me the next day and the time he mentioned (for a day later next week) wasn't ideal. How do I tell him and ask for a different time without sounding like a prick? He and the rest of his flying club seemed like very nice people, and were very nice to me the other day, and I don't want to start things off on the wrong foot. I feel like this is a situation where my poor communicative skills could bite me in the ass if I'm not really careful.
First of all, I would have a think and get it clear in your own mind which days of the week you either have clear or are willing to clear for this (depends on what your currently scheduled activities are I suppose, but this sounds like a very positive and exciting skill to learn), and then email the flight instructor. Don't worry about saying if it is not convenient for you, that is what he invited you to do after all
. Don't think of saying "no" or asking for a compromise as a conflict situation or unreasonable behaviour on your part; if you had suggested a time to him and it wasn't convenient for him, would you have expected him to agonise over telling you? Of course not! We all have commitments that we either want or feel obliged to keep to, he will understand that.
You could start your email off by saying "Hi, thanks a lot for getting back to me with a suggested time for my first lesson, I'm really looking forward to it. Unfortunately I'm busy that day/part of the day, are there other openings in your schedule in the next fortnight?". Or, instead of asking for more of
his future schedule, you could tell him which days in the next few weeks would be good for you. As I said at the start of my post, you might need to consider freeing up further time in your schedule, looking at what you currently do and consider which activities if any you could sacrifice.
I don't know what obligations or priorities you have, and thus how realistic my suggestion is, but if you are anything like me at your age then your default mindset might be to accept your current schedule as ironclad (I'm obviously assuming a lot here, I don't know how your mind works or what the particular obstacle is for you), and you may not feel comfortable telling someone you can't or don't want to do a certain activity this week/next week etc. My advice is don't worry about upsetting people or daring to change things (again, don't think of telling/asking for a cancellation of current activities as a conflict situation). It would be a shame to miss out on a rather unique opportunity for the wrong reasons (i.e. not doing it because you aren't accustomed to changing your schedule when it concerns others, rather than because your current activities are a higher priority than the flying lesson and cannot realistically be postponed/cancelled).
I think the biggest risk of you either missing out on this opportunity or of offending anyone (the latter is very unlikely in my experience) would be from fretting too much about it yourself- this can lead to indecision, making decisions you later regret, or causing any communication you make to seem terse and unfriendly. He wants to know when you would be happy to start the lessons, so just get it straight in your own mind what gaps you have or can make in your schedule and get in touch with him promptly. Communicating thoroughly and promptly is usually the best way.
