What is "real experience"

[drbill]

I forgot to add the following to my list:

(4) Real world diving experience in a variety of environments. Many of the divers I encounter while traveling are essentially tropical water vacation divers. Nothing wrong with this... I love to be warm myself! However to amass a body of "real world" experience, one needs to dive in a variety of different climates and geographies. Nothing like a few good cold water dives to humble an otherwise experienced warm water diver. I am not a fan of teaching for the prevailing conditions only. One should at least have some understanding of the issues faced when a diver goes to more chilly, lower vis waters.

 

[SkullDeformity]

"Real" experience being defined by an internet board?

 

[deepblueme]

Glad to see some level headed responces to this topic.

The list I gave were just a few of the things I have heard over the years that some people thought should be included in a staff level class and in no way reflect on my personal thoughs.
I should have stated this.

Still I wonder how people can generalize about the "zero to hero" staff after personaly seeing so many piss poor quality staff that have 1000's of dives under their belt (training for the buck or burnt out.)

I think that any "new" staff should have to be supervised for their frist 30 or so students and every few years all staff level divers should have to go thru a mandatoy review by their respective training agencys.
(and take typing and spelling lessons)

 

[Seadeuce]

I forgot to add the following to my list:

(4) Real world diving experience in a variety of environments. Many of the divers I encounter while traveling are essentially tropical water vacation divers. Nothing wrong with this... I love to be warm myself! However to amass a body of "real world" experience, one needs to dive in a variety of different climates and geographies. Nothing like a few good cold water dives to humble an otherwise experienced warm water diver. I am not a fan of teaching for the prevailing conditions only. One should at least have some understanding of the issues faced when a diver goes to more chilly, lower vis waters.

HEAR! HEAR!!

Now that's my Bible!!!

As already intimated, many divers consider experience to be gauged by no. of dives done, time underwater etc., when in fact they may be in the category of having been diving ten years and only have one year's experience ten times over.

Same with dive trips. Experience of different scenery in the same conditions will not expand your mental or physical arsenal.

As with diving, so also with instructing - the learning goes on. True experience is a mass of new experiences.

So seek out that new experience, embrace a challenge, enjoy the intellectual exchange.
Then one day you will have amassed enough experience to truly value the newer ones.



Safe diving everyone,


Seadeuce

 

[dschulte]

"Real" experience being defined by an internet board?

Yep, kind of like one of those Betcha-Can't videos you just have to watch.
:happyjaz:
:monkeydan

 

[J.R.]

Then there's that wonderful quote that goes, "Intelligence is knowing that only half of what you know is correct. Wisdom is knowing which half." I'm not sure where experience fits in here... I suspect that it is somehow embedded in a series of victories and catastrophies on the way to wisdom...

 

[fisherdvm]

There was a study done in the new england journal of medicine that noted newer physicians were better diagnosticians than older experienced physicians. Figure that out!

Them old geezers better rethink their wisdom as the neurons start to shrink and go limp (and a few other things too ...)

 

[drbill]

There was a study done in the new england journal of medicine that noted newer physicians were better diagnosticians than older experienced physicians. Figure that out!

Yikes... if I ever have to see a doctor again (other than one of my "fellow" biologists), I'll look for the most recent graduate of medical school I can find... especially if she's cute!

 

[Diver Dennis]

I've done over 500 dives in the last year and a half, over half solo. All in warm water, good vis, some deep, some vicious currents and surges though. I would consider myself pretty experienced in those types of dives.

Cold water, low vis? New there even though I used to dive a lot in Canada. Tech diving with doubles? Still a newly minted diver there although I did get a couple of certs I have to dive doubles more to become proficient and a lot more to become experienced.

Someone said on the board once that getting a card means you have a learner's license to start diving a certain way. To become experienced, you have to dive that way a lot. It's not the number of dives in most cases, it's the number of recent dives in my opinion. It's difficult to become experienced unless you dive quite a bit and varied dives as well. Diving the same reefs every day will give you experience diving those sites but not in other situations.

 

[serambin]

I'm not an instructor, and I'm not going to address the list of specific questions. But something I've seen as I've racked up more dives is that I've run into a number of problems or challenges underwater, and I've had to come up with solutions or make decisions. Whether it's been dealing with a freeflow, recognizing an upcurrent for what it was, finding a lost anchor line, diving in pitch darkness in less than five feet of viz, or whatever, it's made me build a library of responses and decision-making strategies, and it's also made me learn to control my own anxiety/panic reactions.

My biggest worry with inexperienced instructors is that they may be poorly prepared to cope with the number of ways a new diver can make life interesting. On my third OW dive, I got separated from my instructor, tumbled to the bottom alone, in poor viz, in current, at a site where the bottom drops off very quickly to beyond recreational depths. My instructor, who was brand new (I was the first student he certified), was frantically searching for me, although as it turned out I was fine. The incident was a non-issue, but one wonders . . . with more experience, might he have chosen another site? Or another time? Or been better prepared not to lose a student on descent in current? I don't know the answers, but those are the questions.

We are all about our experience. We grow and die by our experience. Divers and instructors are no different. C-cards allow us to dive, experience allows us to dive safely.


Stan