Fun as a Training Standard...

[Marie13]

My “fun” in training has come from instructors with incredibly wacky senses of humor, along with fellow students (in many cases friends or dive buddies) who are crazy funny. The dives are all serious but the surface intervals are a lot of fun.

My most “fun” classes were wreck (limited penetration), because well, I’m wreck obsessed, as well as Rescue (which was taken with 3 dive buddies). The 3 from Rescue have gone onto DM, which they’re in the midst of. They’re having a lot of fun from what I hear, but you couldn’t pay me to do DM.

 

[aquacat8]

As early as 1957, Peter Small's gem of a diving book Your Guide to Underwater Adventure summed up underwater fun perfectly in the caption to the illustration below:
View attachment 458623
Peter Small and Oscar Gugen, to whom this book is dedicated, co-founded the British Sub Aqua Club in 1953. Small became one of the first two divers to reach a depth of 1000ft in the open ocean in December 1962, but did not survive the dive.

Great photo! Thanks!

 

[aquacat8]

My “fun” in training has come from instructors with incredibly wacky senses of humor, along with fellow students (in many cases friends or dive buddies) who are crazy funny. The dives are all serious but the surface intervals are a lot of fun.

My most “fun” classes were wreck (limited penetration), because well, I’m wreck obsessed, as well as Rescue (which was taken with 3 dive buddies). The 3 from Rescue have gone onto DM, which they’re in the midst of. They’re having a lot of fun from what I hear, but you couldn’t pay me to do DM.

No worries @Marie13 getting paid is not something DM’s have to worry about!

 

[Richard FDC]

Just a thought...for our sport to thrive we need to provide good experiences. Making the class fun is just part of it. We need to make sure the new diver has a good experience in class by making it enjoyable but also by making sure the student is actually prepared to dive on their own. They may have enjoyed the class but if the instructor doesn't give them the tools to make diving a good experience after the class it's not a good experience. Diving is an adventure sport and people today are seeking adventures over material things.
Millennials: Forget material things, help us take selfies

 

[Charred]

Interesting thread! I have never understood this desire to turn classes into a hazing ritual.

When I got my daughter trained, I decided to do it in Cozumel with warm clear water and stuff to see even during the check out dives.

BUT - I took a lot of grief from others that I did not have her trained in a 5/7 mm wetsuit in a green low vis super cold reservoir.

p.s. we watched a loggerhead break open and eat a conch on her OW1 !

 

[The Chairman]

We need to make sure the new diver has a good experience in class by making it enjoyable but also by making sure the student is actually prepared to dive on their own.

I have never understood this desire to turn classes into a hazing ritual.

Indeed. Fun and learning are not mutually exclusive. You're going to make learning really stick by making it super fun or stressing the student out. Hazing might be appropriate for young males intent on proving themselves, ie high amounts of testosterone. For most of us, it's simply unwanted, unwarranted and completely inappropriate. I see fun as not only the goal of diving, but also as a tool used in teaching. An often overlooked tool at that.

 

[aquacat8]

I think experienced divers sometimes forget that the whole thing is scary enough for new divers; it doesn’t need any help being a hazing ritual. I remember that even as an experienced swimmer the first time I wriggled into that crazy confining catsuit, strapped this big heavy contraption on my back, put on a weight belt (what even MORE weight?) and stepped off the ledge into deeper water I felt like maybe (not understanding the buoyancy stuff yet) I was going to plummet to the bottom and drown. Was the breathing underwater thingie actually going to work? It better! It really goes against instincts at first! No need to make it harder or scarier for it to take courage...

 

[aquacat8]

I also remember being overwealmed and only taking in part of the barrage of information thrown at me, and this was PADI, where the info is presented in the simplest way possible. It was just overload nonetheless. OW is really just an introduction... Unless the teacher is stellar, and mine was just trying to get us to move through it. I did not understand what the BC was for, thought you were supposed to add air to help you surface, and the instructor just threw weight into my farmer john, because he had like 8 or 10 students in Monterey, so afterwards I thought he had weighted me at 35 lbs! Luckily I began diving right away with a navy trained guy and he got me to lighten up, and got me really diving.

 

[aquacat8]

I wish we had something like that British diving club here.

 

[The Chairman]

I wish we had something like that British diving club here.

We do: www.ScubaBoard.com We're the world's largest diving community.