FPDocMatt
Contributor
My Non-Certification Experience
Recently I took the PADI certification course through my local dive shop, and failed to complete it. Id like to recount the experience, for several reasons. Someone reading this might have some insights as to why it was so difficult for me, and some suggestions on what to do the next time I try to certify. People with similar difficulties may want to commiserate. Finally, I expect it will help me to work through some of my feelings about the experience.
A friend recommended PADI, so I got onto their website and enrolled in the on-line class. These lessons are very well constructed, very thorough, and a pleasure to navigate. It took me a very long time to get through them all--about 13 hours total. At the end I took the online exam and got a good score.
I then called the local dive shop to sign up for the pool and open water portions of the training. I expected them to charge me less for the course, since I wouldnt be attending the classroom portion. But the price was the same with or without the classroom. In fact, the owners of the shop made it clear they had a low opinion of the online training. So I started out feeling resentful of being overcharged, and feeling inferior because my academic training had been online.
The first pool session was difficult. My main fear was of drowning. I kept remembering that adage that you can drown in a tablespoonful of water. I felt that more time should have been taken getting us comfortable with breathing through the regulator. My wife had more trouble than I did with this. She told me that, when she told the instructor that she was afraid of breathing underwater, the instructor replied, What are you afraid of? You have air.
I think the dysjunct here is that the instructors have been diving for so many years that theyve forgotten how foreign a concept breathing through a regulator is. In fact, after going through the course, I think that theyve forgotten the whole experience of learning. Because they had similar attitudes about a lot of the skills they taught us. There was a general impatience with our inability to learn everything the first time.
Both the pool and open water portions of the course are structured in such a way that you are being taught and being tested at the same time. They tell you how to do something, demonstrate it, then watch you do it. If you are unable to do it right the first time, they coach you on the skill and watch you do it a second time. If you still havent done it right, they act disappointed in you, and you get the impression you wont be certified. I felt like saying, But arent you supposed to be teaching me how to do it? If I didnt get something right, I didnt feel that they were taking any responsibility in the matter. It was weird.
I think the most important thing I learned in the pool portion of the course is how to deal with choking underwater. Heres how it came about. They taught us how to clear our masks. They said, Lean your head back, press on the upper portion of the mask, and breathe out through your nose. When I leaned back, water immediately came into my nose and down my throat, causing me to choke. So they taught us what to do when choking. You cough right into the regulator. So the next time I tried to clear my mask and swallowed some water, instead of coming to the surface, I held the regulator and coughed into it. It required a tremendous amount of self-control to do this, but it worked. And when I choked again the next time, I did it again.
It turns out that they shouldnt say lean your head back and then breathe out through your nose. They should say, start breathing out through your nose before you lean your head back. That way the water in the mask doesnt go into your nose.
But the experience of choking underwater, and learning how to deal with it without surfacing--this, more than anything else in the course, helped me to have faith in the diving apparatus. Because I now knew that, if I got into trouble while at depth, I wouldnt drown. Unfortunately, this was just a happenstance lesson, and not part of the curriculum.
An analogous and similarly valuable lesson occurred during the part where you alternate snorkle and regulator while swimming. I made the mistake of taking the snorkel out of my mouth after the exhale, so was not able to clear the regulator by exhaling. I asked the instructor, and was told to hit the purge valve. Even though I had been taught about the purge valve, I had forgotten it was an option. Imagine if Id been 30 feet down and in that situation, I would have drowned because of having forgotten about the purge valve. Now I knew that this would not be a problem, because Id learned about it. But this is not a part of the course either. I think they should have an exercise in which you are forced to use the purge valve.
During the second pool session, we did the fin flip followed by hovering to maintain neutral buoyancy. I did the fin flip just fine, but the neutral buoyancy was darn near impossible. I would let all the air out of my BCD, sink to the buttom, then breathe in, but I was still on the bottom. So I added a small amt of air to my BCD, breathed in, and then rose to the surface. They told me that I was putting too much air in the BCD, but I dont think that was the case. I found that my buoyancy varied dramatically with my depth. This is a principle which they had taught us. I might be neutrally buoyant, but then inhale too much air and end up on the surface. Or exhale and end up on the bottom. In the end, I was able to maintain neutral buoyancy by inhaling and exhaling small amounts in succession. But this is not normal breathing, and I always had the impression that if I didnt breathe out or in at just the right moment I would rise to the surface or sink to the bottom. I think I had more trouble than anyone else in the class with this.
One problem I kept having was locating the inflator/deflator control for the BCD. It was on the left-hand side of my BCD. Sometimes I could find it easily, and other times I couldnt find it anywhere. The problem is, when youre sinking or bobbing to the surface without wanting to, you need to find that inflator/deflator right now. I talked with a couple of the instructors about it, but they didnt seem to understand why I had so much trouble finding it, and had no suggestions as to how to avoid this problem.
By the end of the third pool session, I had read a book about scuba diving, and taken some practice test questions on my iPhone. I had asked lots of questions of the instructors. I was nervous about the written test.
After the third pool session, I attended the last class with everyone else. I did this mainly to appease the instructors irritation with my skipping the classes. I took the required 18-question test to prove that I had learned the academic concepts online, missing 2 questions. Then I took the 50-question test that everyone else took, missing one question. This was substantially better than anyone else in the class, but none of the instructors admitted that my online training had been adequate.
It turns out that there are no consequences for failing the written test, since the instructor goes over all the missed questions afterwards, and nobody is failed from the course for lack of knowledge.
The following Thursday evening I came by the dive shop as instructed, and picked up the equipment I would need for the quarry dives--2 full tanks, a thick wetsuit with hood and gloves, a BCD, and a weight belt with extra weights. Friday night I drove the 4 hours to the quarry, checking into a hotel nearby.
At the quarry the next morning I checked in at the groups pavilion. When we were all assembled, we got into our wetsuits, donned our gear, and trudged down the hill to the quarry shore. This was a 100-yard walk down a gently sloping hill. Someone had told me the tank weighs 50 pounds, and the weights I was wearing were another 36. Im not in bad shape for a 58-year-old, but this walk down the hill with all that weight on was not an easy matter.
Another thing they dont warn you about is the claustrophobia from wearing a really thick wetsuit, with hood and gloves. And the material of the wetsuit is extremely clingy and stretchy and unwieldy. You could exhaust yourself struggling with it while putting the wetsuit on or taking the wetsuit off. Struggling with my wetsuit was one of the truly unpleasant parts of the experience.
In the water, which was cold, I was impressed by the insulation provided by the thick wetsuit. I was never cold while in the quarry.
There were many divers at the quarry that day, because a company was giving free demonstrations of a dry suit. This was a problem, because its darn-near impossible to tell whos who when everybodys wearing a hood. I couldnt tell which divers were part of my group, or which divers were the instructors.
The instructor told us that we would be swimming over to a platform, then diving. After shed been talking for 5 minutes, I remarked that I finally understood that the platform was on the bottom, not just under the surface. One of the other instructors made fun of me for not understanding this right away. This is just another example of the instructors not seeing things from the point of view of a neophyte. To a non-diver, a platform in a lake does not usually mean a platform on the bottom of the lake.
Descending the line to the platform was a painful experience for me. I tried equalizing every step of the way, but was unable to equalize quickly. My left ear kept hurting, I would go back up a couple of feet, try again, over and over again. It took me a good 8 minutes to reach the platform, and it was only 15 feet deep.
While descending, I was struggling to maintain neutral buoyancy. I had one hand on the line, one hand on my nose to equalize. But I needed another hand for the inflator/deflator control. And sometimes I couldnt locate it. Which was disastrous, because I would sink to the bottom of the quarry quickly (making my left ear hurt terribly), and wanted to stop my descent.
Once I was equalized and relatively neutrally buoyant, I knelt along the edge of the platform as instructed. But I kept falling to one side. I was unable to stay steady on the platform.
After we demonstrated the fin flip and hovering, we had been instructed to swim around the platform a few times. Which we did. After surfacing the instructor told us she had wanted us to stay on the platform while swimming around it, not swim around the outside of it. I thought this was not clear at all from the instruction to swim around the platform, but she seemed irritated about our lack of understanding.
Another source of irritation to our instructor was the fact that we spent so much time on the bottom of the quarry, stirring up the silt. In my case, this was because of my inability to stay neutrally buoyant. Apparently, some of the other students were having similar difficulties.
When we got out of the quarry from our morning session, we trudged back up the hill wearing all our gear. We were told this was much easier than taking the gear off at the edge of the quarry and carrying it up the hill by hand. Im sure this was true, but I had the devil of a time making it back to the pavilion. I kept having to stop to rest, and at one point had to sit down on a rock for a few minutes.
At the pavilion I started to get really cold. I wasnt sure what I should do to stay warm for the one-hour lunch break, so decided to get out of the wet suit entirely and put dry clothes on. It was while struggling out of the stretchy wetsuit that I had the idea to quit. The combination of painful ears, a sense of incompetence, the cold, and severe fatigue was all together making me not have a good time.
I told the instructors that I didnt think I could carry on for the afternoon dive, but after they encouraged me to not give up I put everything back on and we trudged back down to the quarry.
This time I had to stop and rest several times, even walking downhill. By the time I was wading into the shallows, I began to think that this was not a good idea. I was so exhausted that, if I got into any kind of trouble, I wouldnt have the strength to deal with it. So I told the instructors I didnt think I should carry on.
One of the instructors carried my tank and BCD up the hill for me. I thanked him, got showered and dressed, and packed up my gear and put it into my car.
I was so exhausted that I went ahead and stayed the second night in the hotel, even though I wouldnt be participating in the dive the next day.
Several of us had been planning to have dinner together that evening. I left instructions with one of the divers as to how they could locate me in my hotel, but never got a call about dinner. I wondered at the time whether having dropped out made me persona non grata.
On Sunday night at home I took all the gear into the shower and rinsed it off. I hung it all up to dry overnight. The next morning I packed the gear back into the gear bag and put it in the back of my car to return it that evening after work.
On Monday at work I had one of my colleagues look in my left ear, and he said the tympanic membrane was bulging and red. This meant either that I had had an ear infection before the dive began, or that all the equalizing had traumatized the ear. Since adults dont get ear infections easily, I suspect it was the latter.
That evening I drove by the dive shop to return the gear. I was greeted in a less-than-friendly fashion by the two owners of the shop. They barely spoke to me. It was weird.
My wife had been unable to do the quarry dive due to work, so were both now in the same boat of needing to complete our certifications. Weve decided to do it in the Caribbean at a resort. Ive already called PADI, and spoken with a very nice lady who gave me some good suggestions on where to go.
I have to say, though, Im quite nervous about diving now. I wonder whether Ill always have that much trouble equalizing and maintaining neutral buoyancy. If so, I imagine scuba diving will never be the joy for me that it is to so many others. But I dont want to give up on the certification idea. Right now I just want to complete something I started. Hopefully itll go okay the second time.
Recently I took the PADI certification course through my local dive shop, and failed to complete it. Id like to recount the experience, for several reasons. Someone reading this might have some insights as to why it was so difficult for me, and some suggestions on what to do the next time I try to certify. People with similar difficulties may want to commiserate. Finally, I expect it will help me to work through some of my feelings about the experience.
A friend recommended PADI, so I got onto their website and enrolled in the on-line class. These lessons are very well constructed, very thorough, and a pleasure to navigate. It took me a very long time to get through them all--about 13 hours total. At the end I took the online exam and got a good score.
I then called the local dive shop to sign up for the pool and open water portions of the training. I expected them to charge me less for the course, since I wouldnt be attending the classroom portion. But the price was the same with or without the classroom. In fact, the owners of the shop made it clear they had a low opinion of the online training. So I started out feeling resentful of being overcharged, and feeling inferior because my academic training had been online.
The first pool session was difficult. My main fear was of drowning. I kept remembering that adage that you can drown in a tablespoonful of water. I felt that more time should have been taken getting us comfortable with breathing through the regulator. My wife had more trouble than I did with this. She told me that, when she told the instructor that she was afraid of breathing underwater, the instructor replied, What are you afraid of? You have air.
I think the dysjunct here is that the instructors have been diving for so many years that theyve forgotten how foreign a concept breathing through a regulator is. In fact, after going through the course, I think that theyve forgotten the whole experience of learning. Because they had similar attitudes about a lot of the skills they taught us. There was a general impatience with our inability to learn everything the first time.
Both the pool and open water portions of the course are structured in such a way that you are being taught and being tested at the same time. They tell you how to do something, demonstrate it, then watch you do it. If you are unable to do it right the first time, they coach you on the skill and watch you do it a second time. If you still havent done it right, they act disappointed in you, and you get the impression you wont be certified. I felt like saying, But arent you supposed to be teaching me how to do it? If I didnt get something right, I didnt feel that they were taking any responsibility in the matter. It was weird.
I think the most important thing I learned in the pool portion of the course is how to deal with choking underwater. Heres how it came about. They taught us how to clear our masks. They said, Lean your head back, press on the upper portion of the mask, and breathe out through your nose. When I leaned back, water immediately came into my nose and down my throat, causing me to choke. So they taught us what to do when choking. You cough right into the regulator. So the next time I tried to clear my mask and swallowed some water, instead of coming to the surface, I held the regulator and coughed into it. It required a tremendous amount of self-control to do this, but it worked. And when I choked again the next time, I did it again.
It turns out that they shouldnt say lean your head back and then breathe out through your nose. They should say, start breathing out through your nose before you lean your head back. That way the water in the mask doesnt go into your nose.
But the experience of choking underwater, and learning how to deal with it without surfacing--this, more than anything else in the course, helped me to have faith in the diving apparatus. Because I now knew that, if I got into trouble while at depth, I wouldnt drown. Unfortunately, this was just a happenstance lesson, and not part of the curriculum.
An analogous and similarly valuable lesson occurred during the part where you alternate snorkle and regulator while swimming. I made the mistake of taking the snorkel out of my mouth after the exhale, so was not able to clear the regulator by exhaling. I asked the instructor, and was told to hit the purge valve. Even though I had been taught about the purge valve, I had forgotten it was an option. Imagine if Id been 30 feet down and in that situation, I would have drowned because of having forgotten about the purge valve. Now I knew that this would not be a problem, because Id learned about it. But this is not a part of the course either. I think they should have an exercise in which you are forced to use the purge valve.
During the second pool session, we did the fin flip followed by hovering to maintain neutral buoyancy. I did the fin flip just fine, but the neutral buoyancy was darn near impossible. I would let all the air out of my BCD, sink to the buttom, then breathe in, but I was still on the bottom. So I added a small amt of air to my BCD, breathed in, and then rose to the surface. They told me that I was putting too much air in the BCD, but I dont think that was the case. I found that my buoyancy varied dramatically with my depth. This is a principle which they had taught us. I might be neutrally buoyant, but then inhale too much air and end up on the surface. Or exhale and end up on the bottom. In the end, I was able to maintain neutral buoyancy by inhaling and exhaling small amounts in succession. But this is not normal breathing, and I always had the impression that if I didnt breathe out or in at just the right moment I would rise to the surface or sink to the bottom. I think I had more trouble than anyone else in the class with this.
One problem I kept having was locating the inflator/deflator control for the BCD. It was on the left-hand side of my BCD. Sometimes I could find it easily, and other times I couldnt find it anywhere. The problem is, when youre sinking or bobbing to the surface without wanting to, you need to find that inflator/deflator right now. I talked with a couple of the instructors about it, but they didnt seem to understand why I had so much trouble finding it, and had no suggestions as to how to avoid this problem.
By the end of the third pool session, I had read a book about scuba diving, and taken some practice test questions on my iPhone. I had asked lots of questions of the instructors. I was nervous about the written test.
After the third pool session, I attended the last class with everyone else. I did this mainly to appease the instructors irritation with my skipping the classes. I took the required 18-question test to prove that I had learned the academic concepts online, missing 2 questions. Then I took the 50-question test that everyone else took, missing one question. This was substantially better than anyone else in the class, but none of the instructors admitted that my online training had been adequate.
It turns out that there are no consequences for failing the written test, since the instructor goes over all the missed questions afterwards, and nobody is failed from the course for lack of knowledge.
The following Thursday evening I came by the dive shop as instructed, and picked up the equipment I would need for the quarry dives--2 full tanks, a thick wetsuit with hood and gloves, a BCD, and a weight belt with extra weights. Friday night I drove the 4 hours to the quarry, checking into a hotel nearby.
At the quarry the next morning I checked in at the groups pavilion. When we were all assembled, we got into our wetsuits, donned our gear, and trudged down the hill to the quarry shore. This was a 100-yard walk down a gently sloping hill. Someone had told me the tank weighs 50 pounds, and the weights I was wearing were another 36. Im not in bad shape for a 58-year-old, but this walk down the hill with all that weight on was not an easy matter.
Another thing they dont warn you about is the claustrophobia from wearing a really thick wetsuit, with hood and gloves. And the material of the wetsuit is extremely clingy and stretchy and unwieldy. You could exhaust yourself struggling with it while putting the wetsuit on or taking the wetsuit off. Struggling with my wetsuit was one of the truly unpleasant parts of the experience.
In the water, which was cold, I was impressed by the insulation provided by the thick wetsuit. I was never cold while in the quarry.
There were many divers at the quarry that day, because a company was giving free demonstrations of a dry suit. This was a problem, because its darn-near impossible to tell whos who when everybodys wearing a hood. I couldnt tell which divers were part of my group, or which divers were the instructors.
The instructor told us that we would be swimming over to a platform, then diving. After shed been talking for 5 minutes, I remarked that I finally understood that the platform was on the bottom, not just under the surface. One of the other instructors made fun of me for not understanding this right away. This is just another example of the instructors not seeing things from the point of view of a neophyte. To a non-diver, a platform in a lake does not usually mean a platform on the bottom of the lake.
Descending the line to the platform was a painful experience for me. I tried equalizing every step of the way, but was unable to equalize quickly. My left ear kept hurting, I would go back up a couple of feet, try again, over and over again. It took me a good 8 minutes to reach the platform, and it was only 15 feet deep.
While descending, I was struggling to maintain neutral buoyancy. I had one hand on the line, one hand on my nose to equalize. But I needed another hand for the inflator/deflator control. And sometimes I couldnt locate it. Which was disastrous, because I would sink to the bottom of the quarry quickly (making my left ear hurt terribly), and wanted to stop my descent.
Once I was equalized and relatively neutrally buoyant, I knelt along the edge of the platform as instructed. But I kept falling to one side. I was unable to stay steady on the platform.
After we demonstrated the fin flip and hovering, we had been instructed to swim around the platform a few times. Which we did. After surfacing the instructor told us she had wanted us to stay on the platform while swimming around it, not swim around the outside of it. I thought this was not clear at all from the instruction to swim around the platform, but she seemed irritated about our lack of understanding.
Another source of irritation to our instructor was the fact that we spent so much time on the bottom of the quarry, stirring up the silt. In my case, this was because of my inability to stay neutrally buoyant. Apparently, some of the other students were having similar difficulties.
When we got out of the quarry from our morning session, we trudged back up the hill wearing all our gear. We were told this was much easier than taking the gear off at the edge of the quarry and carrying it up the hill by hand. Im sure this was true, but I had the devil of a time making it back to the pavilion. I kept having to stop to rest, and at one point had to sit down on a rock for a few minutes.
At the pavilion I started to get really cold. I wasnt sure what I should do to stay warm for the one-hour lunch break, so decided to get out of the wet suit entirely and put dry clothes on. It was while struggling out of the stretchy wetsuit that I had the idea to quit. The combination of painful ears, a sense of incompetence, the cold, and severe fatigue was all together making me not have a good time.
I told the instructors that I didnt think I could carry on for the afternoon dive, but after they encouraged me to not give up I put everything back on and we trudged back down to the quarry.
This time I had to stop and rest several times, even walking downhill. By the time I was wading into the shallows, I began to think that this was not a good idea. I was so exhausted that, if I got into any kind of trouble, I wouldnt have the strength to deal with it. So I told the instructors I didnt think I should carry on.
One of the instructors carried my tank and BCD up the hill for me. I thanked him, got showered and dressed, and packed up my gear and put it into my car.
I was so exhausted that I went ahead and stayed the second night in the hotel, even though I wouldnt be participating in the dive the next day.
Several of us had been planning to have dinner together that evening. I left instructions with one of the divers as to how they could locate me in my hotel, but never got a call about dinner. I wondered at the time whether having dropped out made me persona non grata.
On Sunday night at home I took all the gear into the shower and rinsed it off. I hung it all up to dry overnight. The next morning I packed the gear back into the gear bag and put it in the back of my car to return it that evening after work.
On Monday at work I had one of my colleagues look in my left ear, and he said the tympanic membrane was bulging and red. This meant either that I had had an ear infection before the dive began, or that all the equalizing had traumatized the ear. Since adults dont get ear infections easily, I suspect it was the latter.
That evening I drove by the dive shop to return the gear. I was greeted in a less-than-friendly fashion by the two owners of the shop. They barely spoke to me. It was weird.
My wife had been unable to do the quarry dive due to work, so were both now in the same boat of needing to complete our certifications. Weve decided to do it in the Caribbean at a resort. Ive already called PADI, and spoken with a very nice lady who gave me some good suggestions on where to go.
I have to say, though, Im quite nervous about diving now. I wonder whether Ill always have that much trouble equalizing and maintaining neutral buoyancy. If so, I imagine scuba diving will never be the joy for me that it is to so many others. But I dont want to give up on the certification idea. Right now I just want to complete something I started. Hopefully itll go okay the second time.
