Here’s a familiar scene that plays out in testing centers: A confident student walks into their written exam, after weeks of studying, armed with color-coded notes, an aviation app-filled phone, and a quiet plan to deal with the “advanced stuff” (like electrical systems) later. Two hours later, they walk out and it’s like the questions were written in Wingdings. Wondering how they could have possibly felt so prepared yet performed so poorly.
If that hits a little too close to home, don’t worry, you’re not alone. We’ve guided students through the late-night study sessions, pre-checkride jitters, and lightbulb moments for years. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s not about how long you study. It’s about how you study.
Here are three common study mistakes that could be stalling your progress and preventing you from reaching mastery.
Mistake #1: Information Stockpile
The Problem: Let’s call it “stockpiling for the academic apocalypse: every text, app, and tab you can get your hands on—just in case”. Your phone is full of aviation apps, your bookshelf groans under the weight of every study guide ever published, and your browser has seventeen tabs open—FAA websites, Reddit hot takes, and YouTube videos featuring scribbled whiteboards and analogies that would make Bernoulli weep.
But when someone asks you to explain lift, your brain enters a holding pattern—circling half-remembered facts, conflicting explanations, and zero confidence. You’re hungry for information but starving for understanding.
The issue isn’t a lack of information. It’s information overload. When you’ve got five different explanations for the same concept, your brain starts treating all of them as equally valid. Which means none of them stick. It’s like driving lost and confused through Houston. Your GPS says “continue on 59”, the sign reads 69, and the locals still call it the Southwest Freeway. Not knowing which source to trust, you just keep circling the loop, hoping something eventually makes sense.
The Solution: Embrace the “one source rule”. Pick one, comprehensive ground school program and stick with it. At least until you have the fundamentals down pat. Trying to learn from every resource at once is like trying to take off with four checklists and three backseat copilots shouting different instructions.
Learning to fly is like building a house. You need a solid foundation before you start hanging your pictures on the walls. That’s how we teach our learners at MzeroA. Our ground school is designed the way pilots actually learn—intentional, progressive, and skill-based. We don’t just throw facts at you. We build your knowledge brick by brick. When you move from our aerodynamics lesson into our flight maneuvers lesson, you won’t just know the textbook definitions of the four fundamental forces, you’ll be able to understand how those forces come to life in each maneuver. Every lesson lays the groundwork for the next. So you don’t just learn aviation, you master it.
Pro Tip: Try the Feynman Technique. At the end of each study session, explain what you just learned out loud to your dog, your mirror, or your very patient spouse. If you stumble or reach for your notes, that’s your brain telling you it’s time for another review. Not another resource.
Mistake #2: Glowing Notes, Dim Recall
The Problem: Open the textbook of a struggling student, and you might need your sunglasses. Every page is glowing like a Lisa Frank fever dream. Neon yellow, pink, blue, and panic green on every page. The problem? It’s not studying, it’s coloring. When everything’s glowing, nothing stands out. You’ve created a masterpiece of confusion—beautiful, but totally useless.
Highlighting and passive reading give you the illusion of progress, but they don’t require the mental effort real learning actually needs. You’re moving through the material without making it your own.
Now, can highlighting be helpful? Absolutely. If you’re using it to mark key concepts after you’ve understood them or to organize ideas you’ve already processed. That’s engagement. But if you’re highlighting as a way to understand, you’re skipping over the part where real comprehension forms.
The Solution: Use active study techniques that actually engage your brain.
- Confidence-Based Review: Don’t just ask yourself, “Do I know this?” Ask yourself, “How well do I know this?” Categorize your studies into familiar, unfamiliar, and proficient to help you prioritize what truly needs your attention.
- Spaced repetition: Strengthen your memory by revisiting topics over time. This technique can help you boost retention and prevent last-minute cramming.
- Practice, practice, practice: Apply new knowledge right away to uncover areas that still need work. For example, after studying weather reports, try interpreting your local METAR or TAF.
Our ground school members can really benefit from our Free Study flashcards. They’re designed to help you study with purpose. You can choose to review by category and target specific subjects where you need improvement or you can follow our Aviation Mastery Method, which guides you through structured stages that build confidence and retention. Either way, you’re not just reviewing, you’re progressing.
Challenge: Put the highlighter down and pick up a pen. At the end of a lesson, write down 5 things you remember, 2 things you’re unsure of, and 1 question you’d ask a CFI. This pushes you to recall, assess, and question—three things a highlighter can’t do. That’s how you start building mastery and stop decorating pages in neon.
Mistake #3: Academic Triage
The Problem: For some students, studying turns into academic triage. Stabilize the comfortable, non-intimidating topics, and ignore the rest until it’s critical. Advanced weather theory? Later. Electrical systems? Later. The logic is always the same—“I’ll figure it out when I really need to”.
Here’s the truth. Aviation knowledge doesn’t exist in silos. Every concept connects. Weather affects your route. Systems affect your decisions. What you ignore now will show up when it matters most. You can’t plan a safe cross-country flight without understanding the weather shaping your route. You can’t troubleshoot an electrical failure if you’ve never understood how the system works in normal operations.
Delaying the hard topics doesn’t buy you time. It builds gaps in your understanding. And in aviation, those gaps don’t just show up on written tests, they show up in real-world decisions.
The Solution: Start facing the “hard stuff” now before it shows up on a test or in the flight deck. Feeling intimidated by a topic? That’s your brain issuing a NOTAM. You just keep ignoring it.
- Face the Gap: Spend just 15 minutes a day on your weakest topic. Not to review, but to confront. That small, consistent push is what turns confusion into competence.
- Make connections: Don’t let topics live in isolation. Ask yourself, “How does this tie into what I’ve already learned?” Understanding happens when you’re able to link ideas, not when you memorize them in pieces.
- Dig deeper: Surface-level answers don’t hold up under pressure. If you can’t explain how something works, you don’t really know it yet.
We designed our ground school with a passion to provide our learners with a deep understanding that’s accompanied by retention. Challenging topics don’t just appear once and vanish. We bring them back with new context, deeper clarity, and real-world relevance. Because you’re not just preparing to pass a test, you’re learning how to think like a pilot.
Action Plan
- Pick your source. One solid program. That’s it. More isn’t better. Better is better.
- Ditch the highlighter. Use flashcards, quizzes, and recall techniques to actually train, not just read.
- Tackle the tough stuff daily. Spend fifteen focused minutes a day on the topics you’ve been avoiding.
This isn’t about cramming facts or memorizing every regulation word-for word. It’s about understanding aviation principles so deeply that the right decisions become second nature to you. The study habits you use now shape the kind of pilot you become.
So, close those seventeen browser tabs, set aside the highlighter, and start studying like it matters—because it does. When the moment comes when you’re responsible for the decisions made in an emergency, you won’t be unprepared, frantically flipping through a POH. You’ll be flying the airplane, calm, focused, and ready. Because you sought mastery before you were forced to rely on it.
Remember, a good pilot is always learning.