Amelia Earhart the aircraft came close. "I did not understand it at the time," she said, "but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by." By 1919 Earhart prepared to enter Smith College but changed her mind and enrolled at Columbia University, in a course in medical studies among other programs. She quit a year later to be with her parents, who had reunited in California. In Long Beach, on December 28, 1920, Earhart and her father visited an airfield where Frank Hawks (who later gained fame as an air racer) gave her a ride that
Amelia Earhart would forever change Earhart's life. "By the time I had got two or three hundred feet [60–90 m] off the ground," she said, "I knew I had to fly." After that 10-minute flight (which cost her father $10), she immediately determined to learn to fly. Working at a variety of jobs including photographer, truck driver, and stenographer at the local telephone company, she managed to save $1,000 for flying lessons. Earhart had her first lesson on January 3, 1921, at Kinner Field near Long Beach. Her teacher was Anita "Neta" Snook, a pioneer female aviator who used a surplus Curtiss