Nervous student pilot

[lnuss]

Note that it does take a certain amount of adjustment to get used to the different environment, and you'll have to learn what is normal, in terms of how it feels and looks in a variety of conditions. If you can get comfortable in smoother air, the adjustment to turbulence might be a little easier. I can assure you that certain phases of flight when I started training were very uncomfortable, especially the landing approach, where I was gripping the seat hard from short final until we were on the ground. In fact, my CFI made me sit on one hand and fly with the other when we were in some turbulence, just because of the tension and my tendency to grip the control wheel (Aeronca Chief) making me have no feel of the controls, yet I went on to get comfortable and get Private, Commercial, CFI, etc. so things like that can be overcome -- just takes a little time and determination.

One thing that might eventually help is the things you learn in ground school about how the aircraft actually work, and about what the weather is doing along with how each different type of weather (especially the varied causes of and feel of different sources of turbulence). I'd strongly recommend that you read Stick And Rudder by Wolfgang Langewiesche, in this case for the way things should feel in the aircraft, as well as the principals behind them.

You'll also want to have a chat with your CFI about this -- apprehension by folks new to flying is quite common. If you're familiar with who Bob Hoover is, then perhaps you'd be encouraged to know that he had physical problems in flight. A quote from Forever Flying, his autobiography: "from day one I suffered from chronic motion sickness." Another: "The only way to overcome my malady was to make my brain not believe what my eyes were telling it." Evidently he still had to fight it occasionally for a long time. Yet he became an excellent fighter pilot, a noted test pilot, and was often a a famous test pilot's chase pilot during the attempts leading up to breaking the sound barrier, in addition to becoming the consummate airshow pilot.

A surprising number of other well known pilots have had similar problems to overcome. So just keep working at it and perhaps your CFI will have some ideas, too.

Let us know how it goes.

Addendum: Ron and Eric have some excellent thoughts (they posted while I was composing). Stick with it.

Another addendum: Apparently the software won't let me mention the name of the pilot who broke the sound barrier. Twice I put the name in and the software changed it to "a famous test pilot." Will it let me put in General Yeager? Guess it did. And his first name is Chuck. That worked. Strange...