Our adventure has begun! On Sunday we officially started our scuba careers and took our first class on the “professional” scuba path. Very exciting stuff! So now I finally have some interesting things to blog about, other than packing the house or life in Binghamton, NY. So let’s get to it!
Before I get into our actual classes, let me tell you about the school and our classmates. We are doing our training at ProDive in Ft. Lauderdale, which is a PADI five-star career development center. When Andrea and I first got the idea of pursuing this path about a year and a half ago, we did a lot of research into dive schools, and we visited and dove with a few. ProDive came across as the most professional and the most thorough, with a strong and detailed curriculum, a solid emphasis on safety (which is the most important thing in diving), and a great job placement program. The people seemed friendly and fun, but with an emphasis on safety and technique — enjoying diving by doing it the right way. To test our initial impressions, we returned to ProDive last May and completed the Master Scuba Diver Course. Our week doing the Master Scuba Diver program confirmed our thoughts about ProDive. Very fun, but always a strong emphasis on safety, proper technique, and learning the required skills and knowledge. By the time we finished, we felt like different divers — way more knowledgeable about our specialties and about diving in general, and at least 10 times more confident in our abilities, including our ability to dive safely and within our limits. During our honeymoon in Bora Bora and Rangiroa, where we dove frequently, we often commented about ho our training at ProDive had prepared us for the challenging diving conditions we were facing. ProDive is the Ivy Leagues of dive schools, and we are confident we are training in the right place with the right people.
If you’re really interested, you can take a look at the course schedule (we will be completing Phase I through Phase IV) and course descriptions to get a feel for the level of training we will be undertaking!
The classes at ProDive are intentionally kept small, with student/instructor ratio of 8 to 1. Some of our classmates had just gone through open water, advanced open water or the master scuba diver program (considered “pre-phases” as they are not professional classes), so they already knew each other. But there were others who started at the same time as us (including one guy who saw a presentation at a local dive expo and signed up the day before!). Everyone is friendly and nice, and it’s nice to be around people with the same mindset as us — a love of scuba and a desire to make a living at it.
What were really striking about our classmates, though, were their backgrounds. Four of them are former military guys — one marine who did multiple tours in Iraq, one back-seat aviator (think Goose from Top Gun), and two former navy guys, both of whom were navy divers! I found these navy divers to be somewhat intimidating, not necessarily because of their prior experience, but more so because these guys are JACKED! They both look like the lifeguards on Baywatch — 6′4″, super-muscular, 2% body fat. Seriously, it’s like I have Mitch Buchanan in class with me! I say that I found them somewhat intimidating, but that’s not the right word — they are both nice guys, very friendly. But perhaps they feed my insecurities a bit. I have 55 logged dives, and these guys were career divers with the navy. And beyond that, which of these two guys would you rather have as your instructor when you sign up for a scuba class:
I hope you all chose the second guy, because that’s who you’ll be diving with when you train with me! Seriously, though, these two former navy guys are built like the guy in the first picture. I’ve already made clear to Andrea that she’s not allowed to get too friendly with them. :-p
Our training started on Sunday, with the Emergency First Responder course. This is basically first aid, but with a bit of a scuba-slant to it. You learn the most common dive accidents and injuries, how to prevent them, and how to respond to them, including providing CPR/first aid. Other than CPR when someone stops breathing, the most common first aid for serious dive accidents is providing 100% oxygen (the most serious dive accidents result in nitrogen bubbles in the blood stream or in body tissue, and providing 100% oxygen helps dissolve the nitrogen bubbles), so our second day was certification as an oxygen provider. Both of these classes took place entirely in the classroom, where you’d learn skills and practice them. They are important skills, but these were not hard days — both days we were done by 4pm and able to enjoy our afternoons. They were the perfect way to ease us into our scuba training!
On Tuesday we started Rescue Diver training, where you learn to rescue tired or panicked divers, or injured divers. This is obviously very important if we plan on working in the industry and training new divers. It is also very interesting, as you learn about the human body and how diving affects it, as well as the causes of dive accidents and how to prevent them (the best rescue is the one that occurs beforehand and prevents the crisis from ever arising!). Just as an FYI, the most common cause of a dive accident or injury is poor judgment, which makes ProDive’s emphasis on safety and proper technique that much more assuring.
Although we review Rescue Diver skills in the classroom in the mornings, being able to perform them in real life is of the essence, so our afternoons have been spent in the water practicing these skills! Tuesday and Wednesday we practiced these skills in confined water (the swimming pool at the Swimming Hall of Fame), and tomorrow (Thursday) we head out to the ocean to practice skills in the open water. Our pool sessions have been fantastic. Andrea and I both feel like we are learning a TON. Because it is a career development center and most of the class will progress through and earn instructor certification, they always emphasize the basics and make sure you “walk the walk” and follow all of the rules and proper techniques of diving, even the minor ones, so that students can look upon you as a role model and know that the rules and techniques that you teach them have meaning and are not just lip-service. So not only are we learning Rescue Diver skills, but we are really polishing our basic dive skills as well.
And perhaps the best news of all is that during our two pool sessions, I learned that the two Baywatch-looking guys who were former navy divers are on pretty much the same level with their skills and diving as I am! Apparently the diving they do is completely different than recreational scuba diving, and they just get in the water, accomplish their mission and get out. While they may be able to pull an injured diver out of the pool a bit easier than I can, my dive skills match theirs. So in the end, it turns out we’re not that different in terms of our diving — the only difference is that they have six-pack abs and I have a keg.
So that’s my first REAL dive-related update! We love it so far! We finish Rescue Diver on Friday and begin Divemaster on Monday, so I’m sure I’ll have more to post about soon!
GO TEAM SCHMOOP!