And you weren’t traveling at a serious percentage of the speed of sound.
Multi-engine jets are tough, military or civilian, instrument licensing is tough, military or civilian. Nobody said anything about having to be college educated, there’s plenty of hard stuff out there that doesn’t need college education.
It’s not rote learning, it’s teaching instinct. 99.9% of all non-combat flying is the most boring job in human history. But then there’s comes the other .1%, the times they have to ditch in the Hudson, or land in fog with 40MPH winds across the runway. Just like when something bad happens in your car the difference between surviving and not is instinct, the guys that have it live, the guys that don’t don’t. You can train instinct, but it takes many hours to do so.
How many of the people you know went all the way to multi-engine instrument licensing? Probably none. It’s a lot more training, a lot more money, and takes a lot more smarts.
I presume the guys who are now airline pilots went that far. I presume the ones that are just personal pilots did not. I have no idea if the guy that flew fighter jets did or not.