blubberfish
New
I have dreamed of learning to scuba dive for many years. I love the ocean and aquatic creatures. I went snorkeling for the first time while on vacation last month and swimming around with the fish was literally the best experience I've ever had. When I got home I decided to finally make the significant financial investment to enroll in a basic scuba diving course.
Knowing literally nothing about the scuba diving community and all the different agencies, I chose to go with PADI as they are the largest and the most accessible to me. I completed the e-learning this past week and did the confined water dives over the weekend. I was SO EXCITED to finally be learning scuba and was feeling thrilled, giddy, and confident when starting the confined water training. I left feeling deeply unhappy, unprepared, in pain, and insecure in my overall abilities.
Disappointingly, I am not a natural at diving. I did not instantly take to swimming with fins and using the equipment properly. I needed some extra guidance to figure things out, but the instructor clearly expected me to perform all these new skills with perfect mastery on my first attempt. For example, when I didn't perform the emergency ascent using my buddy's alternate air source perfectly on my first try, she absolutely BERATED me. Told me I was awful, that's the worst she's ever seen, that I'm out of air and dead now and I should be ashamed of myself. I UNDERSTAND the importance of out-of-air procedures! This was my FIRST TIME EVER DOING THIS. Her yelling at me and berating me made me feel so stressed out and upset that it actively made it more difficult for me to learn.
On the first day, I had some difficulty descending and staying down while properly weighted. I am able to equalize but its kinda slow so I was descending slowly in order to compensate and not experience pain. I was also having some trouble maintaining depth and would bob back up sometimes- why? Not deflating BCD properly? Not in a horizontal position? Something else? I don't know, she never explained or tried to help me figure it out. She just added more weights to my BCD so I literally sunk like a stone. After being overweighted, I still attempted to descend slowly in order to make sure I was fully equalizing and comfortable. My instructor reached up, fully deflated my BCD, and pulled me down so hard and fast that I experienced MASSIVE ear pain, and this was only in 12 ft of water. She started doing this consistently and I would have to equalize once down at the bottom, sunk like a stone, and in pain. I explained to her that I was having trouble equalizing quickly which is why I was trying to descend slow and controlled and she was like, "you'll figure it out" and continued to aggressively drag me down in this way. I had already been struggling with maintaining neutral buoyancy once underwater while properly weighted, and with the extra weights, it was WAY WAY harder. On the second and final day I asked for the extra weights to be removed so I could learn to do things properly, and she declined. I left my final day of training with an EXTREMELY painful sinus squeeze due to being pulled down so fast without being able to properly equalize. It's been about 16 hours now and it's feeling a bit better but I literally had to call out of work because of it.
I spent over $800 on this initial training, and that is not chump change for me. I know scuba is an expensive hobby, and part of that price was the online course and equipment, but I'm really disappointed that I feel entirely unprepared to move onto open water dives after spending that kind of money. I also very much resent that I spent so much money on something that should be challenging but fun only to be berated, yelled at, and feel stressed out the whole time, and come home in extreme pain that was entirely preventable. Sure, I passed the confined water training on paper, but I honestly do NOT feel prepared or comfortable to start the open water training dives. It's not that I'm not uncomfortable underwater- I was never in fear or panicking, and it felt absolutely awesome and almost magical to be able to breathe submerged. I just needed some extra time and patience to learn the new skills and equipment and I don't feel like I got that. There was no repetition or reinforcement for any of the skills either- do it successfully once, now move on to the next thing. So I don't feel super confident in anything even though I know I have the ability to do it, if that makes sense. Is this a typical confined water training experience? Is it a PADI thing? Was my instructor just horrible? Or is it a skill issue on my part? I really want to continue pursuing my certification but this experience left such a bad taste in my mouth :/
Knowing literally nothing about the scuba diving community and all the different agencies, I chose to go with PADI as they are the largest and the most accessible to me. I completed the e-learning this past week and did the confined water dives over the weekend. I was SO EXCITED to finally be learning scuba and was feeling thrilled, giddy, and confident when starting the confined water training. I left feeling deeply unhappy, unprepared, in pain, and insecure in my overall abilities.
Disappointingly, I am not a natural at diving. I did not instantly take to swimming with fins and using the equipment properly. I needed some extra guidance to figure things out, but the instructor clearly expected me to perform all these new skills with perfect mastery on my first attempt. For example, when I didn't perform the emergency ascent using my buddy's alternate air source perfectly on my first try, she absolutely BERATED me. Told me I was awful, that's the worst she's ever seen, that I'm out of air and dead now and I should be ashamed of myself. I UNDERSTAND the importance of out-of-air procedures! This was my FIRST TIME EVER DOING THIS. Her yelling at me and berating me made me feel so stressed out and upset that it actively made it more difficult for me to learn.
On the first day, I had some difficulty descending and staying down while properly weighted. I am able to equalize but its kinda slow so I was descending slowly in order to compensate and not experience pain. I was also having some trouble maintaining depth and would bob back up sometimes- why? Not deflating BCD properly? Not in a horizontal position? Something else? I don't know, she never explained or tried to help me figure it out. She just added more weights to my BCD so I literally sunk like a stone. After being overweighted, I still attempted to descend slowly in order to make sure I was fully equalizing and comfortable. My instructor reached up, fully deflated my BCD, and pulled me down so hard and fast that I experienced MASSIVE ear pain, and this was only in 12 ft of water. She started doing this consistently and I would have to equalize once down at the bottom, sunk like a stone, and in pain. I explained to her that I was having trouble equalizing quickly which is why I was trying to descend slow and controlled and she was like, "you'll figure it out" and continued to aggressively drag me down in this way. I had already been struggling with maintaining neutral buoyancy once underwater while properly weighted, and with the extra weights, it was WAY WAY harder. On the second and final day I asked for the extra weights to be removed so I could learn to do things properly, and she declined. I left my final day of training with an EXTREMELY painful sinus squeeze due to being pulled down so fast without being able to properly equalize. It's been about 16 hours now and it's feeling a bit better but I literally had to call out of work because of it.
I spent over $800 on this initial training, and that is not chump change for me. I know scuba is an expensive hobby, and part of that price was the online course and equipment, but I'm really disappointed that I feel entirely unprepared to move onto open water dives after spending that kind of money. I also very much resent that I spent so much money on something that should be challenging but fun only to be berated, yelled at, and feel stressed out the whole time, and come home in extreme pain that was entirely preventable. Sure, I passed the confined water training on paper, but I honestly do NOT feel prepared or comfortable to start the open water training dives. It's not that I'm not uncomfortable underwater- I was never in fear or panicking, and it felt absolutely awesome and almost magical to be able to breathe submerged. I just needed some extra time and patience to learn the new skills and equipment and I don't feel like I got that. There was no repetition or reinforcement for any of the skills either- do it successfully once, now move on to the next thing. So I don't feel super confident in anything even though I know I have the ability to do it, if that makes sense. Is this a typical confined water training experience? Is it a PADI thing? Was my instructor just horrible? Or is it a skill issue on my part? I really want to continue pursuing my certification but this experience left such a bad taste in my mouth :/
