3rd time's a charm (class report/s from 3 Fundies sessions in 3 months) - LONG

[lv2dive]

What follows is my experience getting to and through 3 sessions of Fundies in a very short time period. To create some sort of order, and because it felt like report had started to become a novel, I created "topics." I figured breaking it into somewhat manageable chunks would facilitate ease of reading for those who chose to do so. I didn’t mean for it to be so long, but don’t exactly know what to cut out!

How I Got to Fundies
Preparing for Fundies (or perhaps more accurately, Meager Attempts at Preparing for Fundies)
First Fundies Class or February Fundies Class (FFC)
Drysuit Class
Doug's Fundies Classes - Overview
Doug's Fundies Classes - March
Doug's Fundies Classes - April
A Few Random Thoughts
Wrap Up

How I Got to Fundies
I was going to call this "A tale of two classes" but before I could finish writing this class report, I ended up taking some flavor of a total of four GUE classes. So much for that title! (One of the classes to which I am referring is a drysuit class for which I've already posted a class report.) It was hard to figure out HOW to write up this report given that it could be about several different classes. For the most part, this report is focused on the Fundies class/es I took with Doug Mudry (in Apr and May)… references to other classes are provided more for context than anything else. To start, my certification/training history, for perspective:
2000: OW
2001: AOW
2009: Nitrox
2010: Rescue, started Adv Nitrox and Tech Foundations - classroom work, initial dives
2011:
-February: Took first fundamentals class (Failed)
-March: Adv Nitrox and Tech Foundations - Checkout dives (Certified), GUE Drysuit class (workshop)
-April: Took second fundamentals class (Provisional)
-May: Came down for 2 days of dives with third fundamentals class (Rec Pass)

As you can see above, I've got over eleven years of experience diving. During the first decade I probably totaled about 100 dives through vacation diving a couple times a year. Around the end of 2009 I really ratcheted it up and started to get serious about recreational diving. I averaged a trip a month for a year and got in around 150 dives in the space of that time. In the fall of 2010, I started looking at options to take my diving to the next level. I ended up deciding to take Fundamentals, exclusively based on what I'd read on the internet, primarily on SB. Once I made the decision, I got serious about making some health-related changes… among other things, I got on a more whole-foods focused diet and quit smoking (for the final time).

Preparing for Fundies (or perhaps more accurately, Meager Attempts at Preparing for Fundies)
My last rec trip prior to my February Fundies Class (hereafter, FFC) was a two week trip to Indonesia in November of 2010, and as I did not want to be completely rusty for my Fundies class, I found a LDS and ended up signing up for a tech class. I did not believe I needed the skills from that class to prepare for Fundies - in fact, I knew it could be to my disadvantage in some ways (learning a different valve drill order, for example) but I wanted water time and that was the best way to get it. I ended up with doubles and drysuit, as well. I spent two or three days a week for a couple of months in the pool working primarily on buoyancy, and skills related to the tech class. I was supposed to do my check out dives the weeks immediately prior to fundies but my instructor broke his foot so I ended up with several pool hours and one - yep, I said one - OW dive in my doubles and drysuit prior to taking my FFC.

I knew from reading the boards that I would struggle some without having been mentored, or, at least exposed, to GUE/DIR diving, but I did not have any resources available locally, so I focused on what I could, which was trim and buoyancy. I'd spent a significant amount of time in the pool hovering over plastic animals and staring at paint chips in the wall… that was what I knew to work on. So going in, I felt comfortable in these abilities, even with new doubles/drysuit, as I'd been practicing holding a reasonable level of trim (albeit not zero degrees), and staying in one place and I thought I would be ok from a basic skills perspective. What I didn't take into account was what would happen to these basic skills under stress… I'm a reformed perfectionist, and I've recently learned that when it comes to something important to me (like diving), in stressful situations, I tend to revert to type. Perfectionism (and it's sister, self-criticism) do not go well with holding on to newly acquired skills, much less with gaining new ones, in a stressful environment. My FFC was a stressful environment - there is another thread that goes into a lot of discussion about that session. I don't want to start that conversation over again here, but it's impossible to discuss the subsequent class experiences without acknowledging a few things about my FFC.

First Fundies Class or February Fundies Class (FFC)
Anyways, from the first water session (after we worked on propulsion), when we were strongly encouraged to get to zero degrees of trim, I struggled in the water. It was all the more frustrating for me because I knew how to trim out, and I couldn't understand why I was having the issues I was having. New problems surfaced - "special fins" (sculling) and (god forbid) touching the bottom of the pool as I lost control of my buoyancy. And I couldn't figure WHY* all of this was happening!!! It was definitely a snowball effect, because the worse I did, the more agitated/stressed I got, which led to poorer performance. And, there was not an awful lot time in the water to work on correcting these issues in this particular session of fundies. This was my biggest disappointment of this class. While there is a lot that could be discussed about my FFC experience, I'd prefer for the purposes of this report to simply own these issues with buoyancy and trim.

*With the help of a patient instructor, I've since come to understand that when I get stressed I pull my feet back too far, my fin tips go up, and I get head heavy (especially with the tanks I currently own, which I will be trading shortly). The head heaviness is what draws out the "special fins" that had never existed before. I hadn't encountered this situation before because I hadn't previously been stressed in the water. When I'm relaxed in the water I trim out fine. Pretty simple, really. So now, I know what I have to do to counterbalance my stress reaction, when it shows up. Do I do it every time? Not yet, but I'm getting closer

So I didn't get what I expected out of Fundies the first time through As probably is evident above, I got less than expected from a skills acquisition perspective. However, I got more than I expected from an academic perspective. At the time, I would have preferred it the other way around, because then I could have gone on from the class a better diver and not felt the need to continue forward with GUE! There was a part of me that hoped that the more academic aspects of the class would *not* make sense to me because then I could write the whole thing off and go on my merry way. When the gas planning and "excessive" buddy checks and field calculations, etc. all started coming together and making sense, I lost the ability to walk away.

Drysuit Class
One of the recommendations coming out of my FFC, was to take a drysuit class. Doug Mudry was recommended as an instructor and you can read my class report posted 4/1/2011 in this section. I was absolutely blown away by what I learned in that class - not just as it related to drysuits, but in general, and it was less than a week (and several conversations with classmates from my FFC, thanks guys!) that I decided to retake Fundies at the next opportunity.

--continued in next post---

 

[lv2dive]

Doug's Fundies Classes - Overview
So,,, that brings us to Doug's Fundie's classes.. the meat of this report. I wish I could say that I rocked the first class I took with Doug and walked away with a tech pass…but I can't. I can say something better, though… I walked away from Doug's Fundies a much improved diver. The first time I took fundies, "passing" was not important to me going in. The second time, I was retaking Fundies to facilitate achieving my primary objective - improving my skills as a diver. But I'm not going to shade the truth - "passing" was also on my mind. But over the course of the class, the outcome really became irrelevant, because it truly evolved to be about the experience and the learning. At the end of class, when he asked me how I thought I did, I told Doug I knew I hadn't met the standards and I knew I hadn't failed. I knew what I needed to work on, and we talked about next steps. Short term, I had a fun dive planned for the next weekend and was blocking off the weekend two weeks out to work on skills. I was coming back down to N Fl towards the end of May. As It turned out, Doug was running a class the weekend I was planning on working skills, and kind of at the last minute we decided it would work well for me to come down for the dives that weekend. I figured, what better practice than in a Fundies class? Two days of 3+ hours in the water each day… yeah, I'd say that was good practice. So that's how I ended up taking Fundies three times. I went into that last weekend thinking of it as a practice session, and not thinking about potential implications until the drive back to the shop after the last dive. Once we got back and debriefed, Doug and I went through the standards item by item. And I found out that I had passed, and where I need to focus my efforts for next steps.

So where's the Beef? Let's talk about these class sessions! I'm not going to do a blow-by-blow, I've hit some highlights below.

Doug's Fundies Class - April
Kit Review: Since this was the third time I've gone over my kit in as many months, I was not exactly excited about it, but it turns out that I got an lot out of it. Aside from the expected topics, we worked on knot-tying techniques and other topics I had assumed were outside of the scope of the class. At the end of the day, with the exception of some equipment malfunction issues, I have no question that my kit is ready to go to the next level.
Academics: I have already mentioned my academic experience with my FFC was great . I sort of look at this part as GUE's "why we do things the way we do them". It was interesting to hear the same materials presented by a different instructor. The nice thing about taking GUE classes - well, the nice thing in my experience, with this one class which is the only class I've taken multiple times - is that you get the same academic information regardless of instructor… but if you take it from different instructors, the difference is in how the information is presented.
Swim Test: I put this in here because I want people to know it's doable. I'm a 41 year-old, moving in the right direction but not there yet weight-wise, until recently fairly sedentary, woman. I wanted to "beat" my performance from the FFC, so I did the 300 yard in 7 minutes and a 30 yard breath hold. (You too can do it!!)
Balanced Rig Test: Now I've been told - and I know - that my LP95's are on the heavy side. It's one thing to be told something, and know it conceptually, and quite another to experience it. At the end of the first dive, before we swam back up the run (is that how you say it?) Doug had us purge our tanks and drop to the bottom of some hole-type area (it was about 25 feet) then swim up to 10 feet and hold a stop for 2 minutes. It wasn't pretty. I did not have on my thick undergarments, and that made a difference in the lift I was (or rather, wasn't) getting. I had no idea I'd struggle so much to swim up those tanks, practically empty. And I did not look good "holding" (or I should admit, "swimming") a 2 minute stop at ten feet. I did it, but it was not purty. Now I *know* what it feels like to deal with heavy tanks and a wing failure. More on my tanks later.
Cleaning Up: I have to say, Doug can say awful lot without saying a word. After the balanced rig test as we were swimming back, I felt something pulling on me and slowly turned around. Doug held up some cave line (from his reel) that was hooked into my double ender that I had forgotten to take the bottom of my lighthead and clip off. His gestures very clearly articulated, "Oh look, the double ender on your lighthead found some line and got caught up in it, you should remember to clip if off!"… LOL. Of course Doug actually "caught" my double ender up in his line but it drove the point home. Telling me is one thing, having me experience it is another. I'm not saying I'll never forget to clip that double-ender off again, but it's definitely less likely!!!
Figuring out how to relax to get in trim: Throughout this class and the drysuit class, I'd get in trim and stay there, then start to get anxious and bring my feet back and fins up. I had improved quite a bit but as we started task loading with drills, my feet would come in and my fins would slip back up again. Finally Doug has me LIE DOWN on the platform and relax with my weight on my arms (for like three minutes). I was convinced my legs and fins were flat on the platform. When we went back to the shop for the debrief and I saw the position my legs and fins were in (close to exactly where you'd want them) I was SHOCKED. But I now had that experience of how it felt right, when I was relaxed, to draw on for the future.
Peripherally class related: We got back to the shop Friday afternoon for more lectures, and I can not believe I am going to admit this, but it was hours before I remembered that my new TLS350 was supposed to come in to EE that day! I was that wrapped up in the class that I didn't remember. Now, once I remembered it, I had to find out right then if it had come in and go check it out! And it was a few painful hours from remembering it, until class was over and I could try it on!!! But the fact that I could completely forget it was coming in, speaks to the extent to which I was absorbed in the class!!!
The Little Things: One of the things I appreciated the most about this class was that Doug was always trying to get us to do our absolute best... no compromises. When I clipped off my light while my teammate was doing a drill, Doug would look over and tell me to get it back on. The primary light isn't required for a rec pass, and it's not like I was anywhere near a tech pass, so it wasn't necessary for me to use the primary light at all times. But Doug is consistently reinforcing correct behaviors and asking the most of me, even if it's not a requirement for the level at which I'm working.

Doug’s Fundies Class - May
Reinforcing the “Why”: As discussed in my other class report, I learn best when things are explained, and/or demonstrated and reinforced in multiple ways. So I'm sure I've heard before, that the left hand is the working hand and the right hand stays free for donating. In this class, it was reiterated that nothing goes in the right hand except in a temporary hold (leaving right hand free to donate); and that that was the reason the light is in the left hand, and why we use the left hand for the inflator hose for the wing and to work the dump valve. In demonstrating SMB deployment, when pulling the spool out of the left pocket, Doug put it in his right hand, then pulled out the SMB with his left hand, and then put the spool back in his left hand…. and asked us why he did that, to make sure we were clear on the “keeping the right hand free” concept. My skull may be a bit thick, but the reiteration through multiple examples seared the understanding in my brain. The way Doug teaches, you can't help but absorb these concepts, as he is constantly reinforcing them.
Having fun: On a side note, I have never had as much fun in a class as I did Saturday afternoon. I'm sure part of it is that I went into this with no pressure/expectations, and part of it was the company, but whatever it was, the memory of the time we spent doing land S-drills will make me smile for some time to come. Slightly embarrassing as it is, I’ll relay the story regardless, as it does illustrate the fact that training really does build muscle memory. We got all suited up with our BPs and harnesses with our regulators zip-tied to the BPs to do land S-drills. We chitchatted a moment so our primaries were clipped off initially. When we went to start the land drill, I stuck my primary in my mouth and breathed in (not thinking). Of course I got the distinctive diaphragm clapping noise and no gas. Well I immediately reached over my right shoulder to turn on my right post. For whatever reason, everyone happened to be looking at me at the time and the expressions on their faces was priceless. Clearly, I was going to have a hard time turning on valves on a tank that wasn't there! I don't remember the last time I have laughed so hard at myself. From there we continued on (eventually) to have quite a bit of fun with my teammate's excessive level of hydration as reflected in the evidence left in on and around his regs as we went through the S-drills. Of course it wasn't all fun and no work, we probably went through at least ten s-drills on land before moving to the water.
Speaking of Water: I think I mentioned we spent about 3 hours each day in the water. And by in the water, I mean AT DEPTH. One may not be able to solve the world's problems, but there is a lot that can be accomplished/improved given three solid hours in the water every day.

Other Random Thoughts
Doubles: It’s probably a good idea to square one’s tanks away, before taking Fundies. Now I had no idea that I had not done this until I was well into my FFC. On a positive note, I did get a lot of experience working with different tanks. I've worked with LP95's, LP85's, AL80's, LP104's , and 12 Liter's. There were valid reasons for switching each time, I stand behind my choices, but I certainly did not do myself any favors by switching back and forth with different tanks. Probably this is not something most other people would run into, upon reflection, but I'll put it out there anywhere.
Drysuit: I started out with the Fusion and purchased the TLS350 along the way. In all honesty, for me, it is a lot easier to get in and out of, and manage the gas in, the TLS. Of course before last weekend I had to send the TLS back to change the size of the turbosoles so I was quite happy I kept the Fusion as a backup. Obviously it worked out ok for me!

Wrap-up
A couple of thoughts. I am excited about continuing to improve my skills and moving forward, eventually, with GUE. I am also happy because some of my dive buddies who have been following my progress from the beginning are now interested in potentially dipping their toes in the GUE pool and seeing what they think of the waters. I think there is no greater compliment for an instructor than an unqualified recommendation, and I can give that for Doug’s Fundies class. I will close with a quote I posted on Doug's Facebook page after my April class. I hope that the class report above has captured some of why I consider myself “inspired.”

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” --William Arthur Ward

 

[kathydee]

Congratulations! Well done! Way to persevere towards achieving your goal!

[

I wish I could say that I rocked the first class I took with Doug and walked away with a tech pass…but I can't. I can say something better, though… I walked away from Doug's Fundies a much improved diver.

Great attitude !!

As It turned out, Doug was running a class the weekend I was planning on working skills, and kind of at the last minute we decided it would work well for me to come down for the dives that weekend. I figured, what better practice than in a Fundies class? Two days of 3+ hours in the water each day… yeah, I'd say that was good practice. So that's how I ended up taking Fundies three times. I went into that last weekend thinking of it as a practice session, and not thinking about potential implications until the drive back to the shop after the last dive. Once we got back and debriefed, Doug and I went through the standards item by item. And I found out that I had passed, and where I need to focus my efforts for next steps.

Have always found my GUE instructors quite helpful/compassionate and Doug is obviously no exception ;-).

 

[Cave Diver]

Awesome report! Congratulations!

 

[gsk3]

Congratulations! And thanks for the write-up.

This sentence just made me laugh and laugh. So true.

When the gas planning and "excessive" buddy checks and field calculations, etc. all started coming together and making sense, I lost the ability to walk away.

 

[ScubaSam]

Kate - Congratulations, great job! I am so delighted for your success!!!! What an enjoyable report and thank you for your perspective.

 

[PfcAJ]

Great job, Kate!

 

[TSandM]

I think there are two big take-aways from this report. One is that choice of instructor can impact even the most standardized of classes; the other is that perseverance pays off. Wish I had the budget for another C2 class!

 

[ScubaFeenD]

I think there are two big take-aways from this report. One is that choice of instructor can impact even the most standardized of classes; the other is that perseverance pays off. Wish I had the budget for another C2 class!

If you start saving now, maybe you can take it with me

 

[ScubaFeenD]

Kate, I still remember talking to you on the last day of the GUE weekend when you were very disheartened in your performance and unsure of where you were going. Im glad you continued and worked hard, and that it paid off.