By Zoe Robinson
For many students, the weekend of March 22, 2026, was very grounding. I took time with friends to enjoy the weather, lounging on the grass at the park and baking cookies at home. Others were having earth-bound celebrations of their birth or the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr.
But that Sunday, senior Leah Woolfson headed…up and up and up…to go skydiving with one of her best friends. “It was more of a her thing,” Leah said to me about her friend. “I just tagged along.”
The “her thing” in question was something that Leah and her friend, Ruby, had thought of back in middle school. “When we turned 18… one of the things we wanted to do was to go skydiving,” she told me. Skydiving was the first on Leah and Ruby’s bucket list of 18-year-old things they wanted to do, and they decided to start fulfilling them that weekend.
I wondered how they even found a place to skydive around Atlanta, given that most of the area is city. They went to Skydive Monroe, a rural area about an hour out of central Atlanta near UGA, to check her item off the list.
Skydive Monroe, which is the only skydiving center located near the east of Atlanta, has been operating for nearly 20 years, and prides itself, according to their website, on being “Georgia’s finest drop zone.” According to Leah, it was definitely nice and created a pretty solid drop experience.
The process of getting prepped and suited up for the dive was surprisingly lax compared to my mental image of what it would take to jump from 14,000 feet. “So when you first get there, they give you all these forms, and you watch a video, and I really thought there was gonna be a lot more preparation of what to do,” Leah explained. “But we kind of just waited in this room, and they came and put us in these suits… and then they said, ‘We’re going up in the air!’
Once in the air, all she and Ruby really had to do was let the instructor guide them, which was easier than one might think, given that they were so high up. “It’s kind of like zip-lining,” she explained, “how it’s a little bit uncomfortable, but like, it’s fun because you’re still zip-lining.”
The 30-second initial descent was pretty tough, given how fast you’re going as you shoot straight down, but they still got to do some nice turns and flips before finally “chilling” as they descended in their parachutes for the next 2 minutes. Surprisingly, she told me that the parachuting was actually more fun than the drop, as she got a nice view (even though she admits it could’ve been better) and a relaxing descent.
All in all, Leah would recommend the experience to anyone wanting to check off a bucket list item or just to have a fun outing with friends. “It was one of the coolest experiences of my life, and I’m glad I could do it,” she said. Not to mention, a great way to ring in 18!
