The kid’s 19, cut him some slack. I’m sure you were all models of professionalism at 19.

OP: If you have a lot of money and flying is your dream, sure you can make it happen. You’ll need to get 250 hours, private, commercial, and flight instructor certificates, and a multi-engine rating with 25 hours of multi time on your own dime. Then, you can instruct to 1475 hours and get picked up by almost any regional so long as you haven’t done anything really stupid.

You’ll likely need a 4 year degree eventually to get on with a major, but you can revisit that down the line.

Aviation is a serious business though with a lot of lives at stake, and you owe it to the people who will be riding in your airplanes to really hit the books and put a lot of effort into your training. If it’s a labor of love then you won’t mind. If it’s hard labor then that’s a good sign you’d be happier in the long run doing what you do now.

Also, much like the stock market, aviation is an up and down business. Right now it’s up, but no one knows for sure when it will start back down, but it will probably fall very rapidly when it does.