Should I drop out of 141 and give 61 a try, or should I give up on a pilot career altogether? I’m starting to dread my flight lessons, feeling relief whenever they get canceled (working on CPL).

Hi, y'all. I don't know where to go at this point. I started my CPL training a month and a half ago at my college-affiliated 141 school, and after 15 hours, I still have yet to get my VFR proficiency back to my instructor's standards after instrument. The problem with this predicament is that my school's syllabus only allows one dual XC flight to get VFR proficient after IRA. Any time it's not up to the completion standards of the lesson, it gets "unsatted," and the school's management requires you to complete it without any unsat items three times in a row. If you screw up on a flight and the instructor "unsats" you, the clock restarts, and you have to make three successful flights after that to move on. This one lesson is holding me back from getting other helpful training for the commercial checkride, because the next items in the syllabus are solo XCs and night ops.

Needless to say, it's been incredibly soul-sucking, and it's now making me start to lose my drive to continue. I feel like I'm being held back from progressing simply because it's taking me a little longer to get back into the VFR groove and now, I'm starting to have feelings that, even if I switch to Part 61, the damage has already been done to my drive to pilot for my career. My university has, in a way, nearly ruined flying for me; the general culture here is incredibly robotic and soulless and treats it like a job more than an opportunity to learn (they make us wear full-on uniforms in 172's, I kid you not, charging you a "no show" fee if you deviate ever so slightly). This latest roadblock is one of many I encountered throughout my PPL and IRA training.

So, in short, my question is this: Do you think it would be a wise choice to drop out of 141 and give 61 training for commercial and CFI a try, or should I cut my losses ($ and time) and find an alternate career path? I'll have a degree in Aviation Management (I double-majored) in May, so I already have backup plans. However, I don't want to rule out Part 61 if my 141 is the only thing making me hate flying right now.

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