Roadmaps
Agreed. I think all of the roadmaps need to be ammended.
I read somewhere that, prior to Sept 11th, 6 of every 100 career pilots who wanted to go on to the majors would make it.
I imagine that number is significantly less today.
I would also like to add the following thought. Life is not so much the destination as it is the journey.
Like most young pilots I hopped from job to job trying desperately to build qualification after qualification in the race to the majors. It was only after I was furloughed from the major of my choice that I realized I was in such a big hurry to GET there, that I barely had time to enjoy all of the different facets of aviation I worked in up to that point.
While certainly you will not get rich flight instructing, neither will you get rich as a regional airline F/O. So as long as you're destined to be poor, you may as well enjoy the flying!!
I had the pleasure (though I didnt realize it at the time) of flying freight across the Smokey Mountains at sunset, loading freight into the back of a Piper Lance overlooking the ocean in Manteo on the outer banks of North Carolina.
I've flown ILS's to minimums in blinding snowstorms in Jamestown, New York and flown the Expressway visual into LaGuardia on the clearest of days.
I flew VFR cross countries back from the Dominican Republic and drank beer in a place called "Great Inagua" while wild Flamingos walked down the dusty road alongside the bar.
There are probably a thousand other stories that enriched my life as an aviator, but that I disregarded in the race to get "somewhere".
Once you have food and shelter and the occasional "Barley-Malt" (as an old flight instructor once called it) taken care of, try to sit back and enjoy the people, the places, and the sights you will behold as a pilot.
Most importantly ... slow down and smell the avgas.
Just my .02 cents.
... at a flight school where most of the instructors (including me) have to "find their own students" 
