Why No Fundies for DIR Agnostics

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Gombessa, this is not a troll.

What is the purpose of setting students up for failure? I'm dying to take GUE-F (or DIR-F who cares) but I just don't get the concept. Is it the basic military-think of breaking someone down then building them up within an elite team mentality or is it just marketing: "we are the very best, you couldn't possibly pass on the first try"? To me, Primer seems to be GUE-F with a guaranteed fail. I'm planning to take Essentials, practice, then take Fundies. I don't have any axe to grind with GUE or DIR, I just seem to be missing an important concept somewhere. I do my homework before taking any class or instructor, but this one really baffles me...

Fundies is not "militaristic".

The only difference is that you will be evaluated and there's no guaranteed pass. All of the emotional stress around the course is largely due to the fact that the rest of the recreational dive training you don't have to face that, and when you pay your money you typically get the card.

That puts fundies into the category of things like job interviews, tests and other tasks where there is a real risk of failing.

At the same time, nearly everyone can attain the levels required to pass it, with a tech pass, with work.
 
DIR has a very military feel to it as it has been described on the Internet. Perhaps this is where that sentiment comes from...
 
Fundies is not "militaristic".

The only difference is that you will be evaluated and there's no guaranteed pass. All of the emotional stress around the course is largely due to the fact that the rest of the recreational dive training you don't have to face that, and when you pay your money you typically get the card.

That puts fundies into the category of things like job interviews, tests and other tasks where there is a real risk of failing.

At the same time, nearly everyone can attain the levels required to pass it, with a tech pass, with work.

Lamont,

First, nothing negative with the term "militaristic". It is a valid way to train for rapid effect. And you may even know me well enough over the years to know that a DIR-F "pass" isn't the biggest thing either.

I know what skills I'm lacking and I am actively trying to improve them. My last course pointed that out bigtime. In fact, this is why I'm again looking at DIR-F. A tech pass won't get me anything either. To put it another way, exactly what would a tech pass get me?

The issue (as I see it) is that I should bring to the table what GUE considers to be a proper stable platform. Damn, that's the entire point. I don't want to take differential calc to find out I can't divide properly. Nor do I want to waste an entire course getting truly stable. I want to take a course whose only intent is to GET me truly stable. Then and only then will I be ready to get the full benefit of fundies.

yet again, Thanks.
lowviz
 
I want to take a course whose only intent is to GET me truly stable. Then and only then will I be ready to get the full benefit of fundies.

yet again, Thanks.
lowviz

You want to take a course to teach you how to be stable so you can take a course that is meant to teach you how to be stable?
 
Just for clarification... You CAN fail fundies. Most instructors may award provisionals but some do not choose to do so in some instances. Please keep this in mind while applying your knowledge to an organization with multiple instructors who may do things differently than is the norm with which you are familiar.

Fact: I failed... Not provisionaled... failed Fundies, in feb of this year. Reading threads like this, that say no one ever fails fundies, did not help my state of mind then or now. I'm putting myself out there bc I want the next person who comes behind me, who also fails, to know that they can pick themselves and move forward. If you want to know what I'm talking about read my fundies class report/s posted this week on the dir forum. (I'd link to it but I'm on an iPhone and don't know how)

Fact: some fundies classes (at least one which I'm aware) have a failure rate of 50%, a provisional rate of 50%, and a pass rate of 0%.

And yet I'm a fan of gue and fundies, and would highly recommend the class. I am just wanting to make sure a clear picture is represented.
 
Kate,

Would being able to park yourself and hang plus/minus two feet have helped?

There's a short answer and a long answer to that.

The short answer is, well, yeah.
The longer answer - specific to me, bc i assume thats what you are asking - is much longer but in the interest of keeping things positive and not having this devolve, i will be as brief. I addresses this question in large part in the first post of my fundies class report, so I'll not repeat that here except to reiterate there's a difference in being at 30 and 0 degrees of trim, and trying to get to 0 completely threw me off and started a snowball affect. The GREAT news is that my 2nd fundies instructor was able to identify what was going on and give me tools to work through it.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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