Flying? More like falling with style!

 I may be in the minority here but unlike many people, I have only ever flown two separate times in my life and have essentially no experience going through an airport and TSA. 

This being my first time going into an airport on my own without my family or high school, I was able to learn several essential things about the whole process that I did not know or took for granted in the past and below I will discuss what I thought was the most significant of these discoveries. 

rushing

1) Yes, you do need to get there multiple hours in advanced

When I was first told that I should be getting to the airport at around 7:00 AM for a flight at 10:50 AM, I thought that everyone was going nuts and that getting there that early was extremely overkill, which I quickly corrected. I saw several people struggling to get their checked bags accepted at the front of the airport which I realized could add a significant amount of time towards getting on your flight. Another thing that I saw was how insanely long the line for the TSA check-ins was. The line was nearly wrapped around itself along a very long corridor that had to go for at least 100 yards, which despite moving relatively fast could lead to you being late for your flight if you do not arrive with a lot of time to spare if something goes wrong.

2) Pack as light as possible to conserve space and weight

Another thing that I noticed a lot at the airport and something that I personally should try and get better at is trying to pack as light as humanly possible to make life easier when it comes to traveling with luggage. I saw many people struggling to make the fifty-pound weight limit for their checked bags and while I was able to have my bag light enough to get past that, I still know that I could have packed much lighter for this trip and that is something that I feel a lot of people can and would want to get better at doing. 

Luggage

One way that I feel could make this a lot easier is trying to find the lightest possible suitcase or bag to pack your stuff in because I have come to realize that my suitcase alone likely made up for a large portion of my luggage's total weight.