How did they pass?

[JamesK]

Originally posted by simonk999
But getting back to the question at hand, competence is all in the individual diver, no matter how well "trained" he/she is, it's how the training is put to use, or ignored, as the case may be.

That is so true in EVERY aspect of life!

 

[diverjohnz]

personal opinion
The test give you a place to start or end with students, I have never seen anyone turned down a cert but have heard of a few.
I have been diving for over 15 years and have done a lot a diff dives I started off as a tender and take a lot for granted but I have never seen anyone master buoyancy in 4 or 5 dives. I'd say it takes up to 20 dives befor people become comforble under water. Now who will pay for a class that is 20 dives long (lol) not many. It is not natual to breath underwater so give them some time. The written test are not a pass or fail test it is to see what you know and what you need to know to dive safely. The next time you drive down the road just consider the training the person next to you has behind the wheel he makes a mastake it can cost a lot of people to die.

 

[JamesK]

Originally posted by diverjohnz
The next time you drive down the road just consider the training the person next to you has behind the wheel he makes a mastake it can cost a lot of people to die.

If you live in Georgia and think about this, you will probably never drive again in your life! You don't even have to take a real driving test here. You simply have to drive around some cones in a parking lot. Plus, driver education was just finally made mandatory for teenage drivers. I am glad that I got my license in Wisconsin, where they actually make sure you know how to drive beofre you get a license.

 

[Ber Rabbit]

Actually we cover all of this in our OW class. They spend 45 minutes in the pool during one of the last classes with their masks blacked out with duct tape. We teach them how to give all hand signals in their buddy's hand, we tell them it's the same way Helen Keller (blind & deaf for those who aren't familiar with her) learned to communicate. You have to hold hands with your buddy the entire class to keep from losing them anyway. When you want to give a sign you put your free hand into your buddy's hand and make a sign, "OK" for example. Your buddy simply feels the sign and returns it. Signs like "up" are easy, you gently grab your buddy's thumb and press yours against it then move your hand up with the thumb pointing to the surface. A squeeze is done by squeezing your buddy's hand and touching your ear/sinus/etc. with their hand. For "out-of-air" you take your buddy's hand and move it back and forth in front of your own throat in the "out-of-air" motion. You do have to practice this because it feels odd to the receiver at first and they might not know what you want. It takes the students several tries to get the entire "out-of-air" exercise down without being able to see what they're doing. Once they can do that exercise we send them to the deep end of the pool on a mission. They must bring back 3 small metal CO2 cartridges per buddy pair. We let them swim for a minute or so then the surface support people start tossing the cartridges in one or two at a time. They tinkle along the bottom and people finning just keeps them moving around. The blindfolded divers can't tell where the cartridges are by sound, they have to feel along the bottom and try to grab the cartridges without knocking them out of reach. BTW, each staff member in the water has a cartridge on a string so quite a few students "almost" grab a cartridge but it "slips away." (We show them our toys at the end of the class). Not only do the students have to keep track of their buddy while searching for something they can hear but can't see they have to manage to avoid being separated by any other blindfolded divers who are also hunting for cartridges. It's a fun way to introduce a little stress to their diving and the students seem to like that exercise the best out of all the exercises we do. Actually, that's why some of them come back and advance their training--they want to be the one holding that cartridge on a string!

Ber

 

[dc4bs]

Originally posted by Big James


If you live in Georgia and think about this, you will probably never drive again in your life! You don't even have to take a real driving test here. You simply have to drive around some cones in a parking lot. Plus, driver education was just finally made mandatory for teenage drivers. I am glad that I got my license in Wisconsin, where they actually make sure you know how to drive beofre you get a license.

How about this:

I grew up in New Jersey. Took driver-ed and advance driver-ed with skid training and got my NJ license at 17. At 19, I moved to New York, filled out a form and traded my NJ license for a NY license. At 20, I moved to Pennsylvania, filled out a form, answerd a few verbal questions about driving laws and traded in my NY license for a PA one.

When I moved back to New Jersey from PA, they had me retake all the tests before allowing me to trade my PA license in and get my ORIGINAL drivers license back (Yes, the SAME license number I had when I was 17...).

Go figure.

I assume this is policy simply because you must pay a fee each time you take the tests in NJ...