During the winter of 2003-2004, I spent far more time on diving-related activities and less time on the radio than in past years. I managed to get in about 150 dives over the course of the winter, but more significantly upgraded my certification status by several notches. When I started in the fall, all I had was PADI Advanced Open Water Certification. Starting last fall, first came EFR (Emergency First Responder) certification, then Rescue Diver. After that, I worked for a couple of months as a divemaster trainee with the Little Cayman Beach Resort and eventually emerged with certification as a PADI Divemaster. That was as far as I could take things on Little Cayman, though, so I was then led to pursue the Instructor Development Course (IDC) on Grand Cayman. I studied and practiced for many weeks before I went over to Grand Cayman for the IDC, The course was extremely intense, as I had expected. But the most intense moments came at the end of the IDC when we confronted final examinations.
| The PADI way is that all instructor
candidates have to face the two day long Instructor Evaluation (IE),
conducted by a PADI employee who flies out explicitly for the purpose of
conducting the evaluation. In other words, the IE is the culmination
of everything you have done in preparing to become an instructor, and I'll
hazard the guess that every dive instructor alive remembers his IE
vividly. This picture shows what was greeting us as we filed into
the room the night before the IE began and waited to meet our
examiner. The slide says, "Please RELAX!"
Right. And exactly how were we supposed to do that?
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For what it's worth, the two ladies in this picture were not part of my IDC class. They joined us at the tail end to take the IE for their second time. That wasn't at all reassuring. It got even worse when the examiner started talking about the candidate she had who didn't make it until his seventh attempt.
Before we took the IE, we did have an extremely intense 8 days of training. Each day started at 7 a.m. and went past 6 p.m., with only a very few short breaks. Time was evenly divided between classroom sessions, pool sessions, and open water sessions. In each of the three settings, a large proportion of the time was devoted to students making presentations and then being critiqued. The critiques were sometimes brutal, and we all had our turn at suffering public humiliation when we fell short. I think we had presentations every day after the first day, so our evenings were invariably devoted to frantic attempts to put together lesson plans for the next day's presentations.
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The fellow on the far left here is Ash McKnight, our Course Director. Here Ash is giving his critique for a teaching session just completed by Dave, the fellow with his back to the camera. I recognize John and Angela against the pool wall, and they had just played the role of being Dave's students. |
| This is Master Instructor Tim Hunt, who currently runs the training department at Bob Soto's on Grand Cayman. Tim was, to put it bluntly, fantastic. I think Tim may be just about the most skilled diver I have ever encountered. More importantly, though, he was the perfect role model as teacher and instructor. Tim is exactly the guy I would like to emulate when I function in the role of instructor! He is expecting to be able to make the final step from Master Instructor to Course Director this summer. |
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In one of the lighter moments of the IDC, Tim managed to talk Pete into grabbing the hotel pool skimmer and going fishing for Koi in the hotel's fish pond. Our IDC was conducted at the Treasure Island Resort on Grand Cayman, and that hotel certainly had every amenity. Just moments after I took this picture, two interesting things happened. First, Tim disappeared at a critical moment. Second, at that critical moment the hotel manager showed up with a Marine Patrol Officer. Dave and Pete were left doing a lot of red-faced explaining while Tim, just around the corner and out of site, had a good laugh at their expense. |
| After the IE finished, we had a mini graduation ceremony down by the water. Lesley Alexander, our examiner, gave us all completion certificates--all 8 of us passed! Once that sank in on us, we decided it was time to party. Big time. We adjourned to the Seaview Restaurant in George Town and commenced celebrating. Here is Angela (on the left), Ash, and Cathy. Cathy, unfortunately, is in the process of giving her lame excuses for leaving early. In hindsight, I should have done the same! |
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Things get a little blurry for me after these pictures were taken. And I think that is just as well. I do know that things went seriously downhill for the rest of the afternoon, and my memory of the rest of the day is not very good. I was fully prepared for the IDC when I went over to Grand Cayman, but nobody ever warned me about the party after the IE.
