My descent into and out of madness: GUE Fundamentals, or Instruction vs Evaluation

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I took GUE Fundamentals Part 1 from Meredith in January in High Springs. I had actually made contact with Meredith to ask about a day of private instruction/coaching. Meredith suggested we do a two day semi-private session, achieve the coaching/mentoring time, and while we were at it, use the Fundies Part 1 as a curriculum and guide. I did it in backmounted doubles and in my drysuit, because that's the configuration I wanted coaching in. The class exceeded my expectations, fairly dramatically. In the process, most of the pre-conceived perceptions I had about GUE and DIR were revised in a positive way. I am definitely planning to either take a Fundies Part II class if I can find it, or even repeat all of Fundies after I get a few more months of practice. The only downside to my experience was the other participant had to cancel overnight before the first day because of a very genuine medical emergency, so I didn't really get the team experience. There was an instructor-in-training to fill in but changed the character from two struggling trainees figuring out how to help each other. So, in rough summary: I'm glad I did it; I will follow up with more training from GUE both as a training agency and potentially as a community-of-practice, it was great value for money in my opinion but more importantly the outcome for me is more structure to my current and future diving and I believe a better skill set on which to build. Timing in my diving 'career': much closer to the end than the beginning; I definitely wish I had done it sooner.
In general it seems fundies part 2 is scheduled when people contact an instructor to schedule it. However you can often join in a fundies class and only show up for the last few days if the instructor agrees. Mer does this sort of thing, so check with her. The instructors also keep in touch, so she might be able to suggest someone else if she isn’t available.
 
Team awareness will be a big issue for me. I’ve had 400 or so dives having team awareness beaten out of me by anti-buddies for whom being aware of another diver was considered a negative: ‘I shouldn’t have to be aware of you if you’re a good diver...’. I find my diving style is now more independent divers who check in with each other periodically. I don’t think that gets it done in GUE... :)


Being quasi independent isn't precluded. Its fine on non-stressful, poke the fishes kinds of dives. It doesn't really work when you are diving at your limits or trying to accomplish something like measuring a wreck or surveying a cave
 
@DavidFL I had similar issues with Fundies 2 - class was scheduled and canceled twice due to the exact same reason as yours. My instructor gave me the option to join the second half of a full class but even that scheduling was not working out for me (totally on my end, he basically gave me the option to join any of his existing classes).

What I ended up doing was have one of our local GUE divers stand in as my training buddy. From what I've seen/heard, this is not uncommon for even higher level classes. I do have the luxury of being part of a large GUE community but, based on your location, I think it will be fairly easy for you as well.
 
Don't remember the name and also not a current GUE instructor? I'm pretty sure all the long term GUE instructors are based in High Springs, the few instructors that are in South Florida currently were added in the last year.
The only instructor that was down in SoFla firmly associated with Brownies was Dean Marshall, and Dean isn’t a crook and he was a fine instructor.

It could have been Errol Kalayci, he was/is off and on with GUE and I think might be working with Brownies but I’m unsure of that relationship.
 
I’m glad you’re all happy derailing the thread. Please continue without me.

For those few who might have cared about the actual point of this thread: I’m out. SB is *clearly* not the place for substantive long form content or a respectful audience, and mods have made it clear that the intent of the creator is not relevant within a thread. Which is fine: their house, their rules. I will move this to a private blog. I apologize for the distraction: continue with your arguing.
Sounds like you don’t want any discussion. A blog probably is the place for that, rather than a discussion forum.
 
Dean Marshall
That was him
None of what you describe lines up with what I know about Dean. None of it.

I’d love to hear his side of the story.
 
Being a student going through a very intense program using rented/borrowed gear that the person was unfamiliar with can be incredibly intimidating. Heck, I'll admit it, my first day in the water for Fundies part 2 I was twisted in knots even though I literally have thousands of hours experience diving in doubles, this was because of the self-inflicted mental pressure I put myself under.

Under the circumstances of being heavily intimidated/under pressure, I can easily see a scenario where a couple of people were chuckling about soft weights dropping out from behind a backplate, but were chuckling about the event itself, not the student performance. I can see how that could have been misinterpreted. I'm not saying that is what happened here, I'm simply saying that could have been what happened.

Additionally, even very good instructors can have a few bad days and sometimes students and instructors simply don't mesh. I've had students that I didn't mesh well with, it simply happens.

I have no idea/comment on the drysuit bit.
 
Under the circumstances of being heavily intimidated/under pressure, I can easily see a scenario where a couple of people were chuckling about soft weights dropping out from behind a backplate, but were chuckling about the event itself, not the student performance. I can see how that could have been misinterpreted.

That's kinda my impression of this whole thing. Heavily colored by perception at the time. In my fundies class, I got turtled in the run at ginnie trying to fix a calf cramp. That particular clip got replayed a few times for laughs. There was nothing malicious about it and it came with good feedback, but I can see someone interpreting it entirely wrong and getting upset. That's why I think there's a lot of context missing here.
 
That's kinda my impression of this whole thing. Heavily colored by perception at the time. In my fundies class, I got turtled in the run at ginnie trying to fix a calf cramp. That particular clip got replayed a few times for laughs. There was nothing malicious about it and it came with good feedback, but I can see someone interpreting it entirely wrong and getting upset. That's why I think there's a lot of context missing here.

Saw the same thing happen when this guy failed to get a tech pass. He took all the criticism personally, because of his over inflated ego, and blamed the instructor for everything, chewed her out and left early. :rofl3: His big ego just couldn't handle the fact that he needed to improve in order to pass. An overinflated ego can certainly cause huge misperceptions.
 
OK. This is interesting... A mod seems to have stepped in and changed things and then asked why I hadn't asked for help, and then outlined their view of how this should have worked. Mistakes were made, many on my side. So I'm taking a deep breath.

My biggest point in writing this is that I'm trying to become more humble in my internal thinking, and to better understand where pride and fear have stopped me from making progress. Maybe others might see themselves in it, maybe not. But I can certainly try to apply those lessons in other areas of my life -- like working with ScubaBoard! :)

There is a *real* difference with this post. In this post, unlike literally every other post I've ever written, I was *not* interested in creating or participating in debate. This is too personal and sensitive. I wanted to encourage others who might feel the same way I did to think about it. But I was not looking for some sort of "solution" to my own situation. In fact, it was that exact evaluate-first-and-only mindset that I was railing against -- accurate or not, such behavior wasn't going to be successful in making me actually *feel* better, and at this point, I'm feeling much more than thinking.

(Don't any of you have spouses? Don't they ever tell you a problem and then remind you that they're not looking for advice, they're simply venting? Or do they just get mad at you and you don't know why? That might be it....... I know I do it enough to *my* spouse -- she's aware enough to remind me of this when it happens.)

In the end, I have come to the conclusion that ScubaBoard is not the proper venue for this. It seems that it is impossible to post something *without* it becoming a debate. And I'm not asking for debate. And the fault is mine: I'm asking round pegs to fit into my square hole. I *could* simply turn this into a impersonal mechanical report of facts and events, but I'm not interested in writing that.

I was told not to tell people when you're leaving -- most don't care, and the only people who will react will react negatively or simply be emboldened. I understand that. But I also don't think it's fair to simply abandon something you've created unfinished. I don't plan on leaving this unfinished, but I don't plan on completing it here.

My wife has asked me to expand on what I've written here in her blog related to homeschool and lifelong learning. She has found that the paralysis and fear that I've inflicted on myself is fairly common when others approach her about the idea of homeschooling and seeing someone else struggle with this would be valuable for her -- someone who is involved with homeschooling already, no less, but has their *own* area of fear and paralysis. So that is what I'm going to do.

There's one big advantage to that: exactly *zero* people will have heard of GUE, and won't bring along their axes to grind! :)

I *will* post a link when that gets going. And you're welcome to participate there -- there are comments enabled. I *will* keep things sharply on-topic there, and the topic will be primarily learning, not SCUBA. And you're welcome to participate *here*. I very likely won't reply much here, but there might be some. But please: do your thing here.

It probably won't be posted until after the class. I'm going to need to re-write the introduction, and I may not finish before. But I will write things up as I go along, and it will get up.

So I don't really think I'm taking my ball and going home; I'm more taking my tennis ball off the basketball court, where it should have never been. If you want to play tennis, come along! :)

I'm still figuring this out as I go along. I'm sorry for the disruption. I appreciate your patience.
 
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http://cavediveflorida.com/Rum_House.htm

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