PADI IDC - last day tomorrow… then the real business begins!
We’ve got another 2-day update for you today. I’m still not feeling 100% (although 24 hours without food has done me a lot of good I think) and last night I wasn’t really in the literary mood. But today I’ve got some time on my hand and the pressure is off marginally, for a day at least.
So let’s have a look at the past couple of days, and what better way to start than with yesterday. Well Saturday started very well for me, getting texts during the night saying that Wigan had come from behind at half time to beat Leeds at Headingley 20-18. That’s a great win considering the opposition, and everything that happened on Monday with the salary cap. If we hadn’t have had those points deducted, we’d have been in 7th place on Friday night and with the playoffs as a possibility. As it happens, survival is still the priority and hopefully results will go our way this weekend. So I got to the World Resort in relatively good spirits and ready for my presentations. I had the unenviable task of demonstrating and evaluating the CESA in the pool, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it might have been. I didn’t think things were perfect though, so I was pleasantly surprised that I’d got full marks in that presentation. I seem to keep exceeding my expectations, but then again that isn’t a major thing to do as I never let myself get overconfident about things. That leads to complacency, which inevitably leads to failure. But more on that in a second. Most people did well in their presentations, with some people netting excellent scores too. So with morale pretty high we dried off and headed up to the classroom for our second prescriptive teaching presentation, and the last presentation we’d make before the IE. I certainly was aiming to end on a high note.
Out of the 7 presentations, I presented 5th. Don’t know whether it was something in the water or what, but some of the presentations before mine were pretty oridinary to be honest. People were missing out simple things and losing easy points. And then one guy talked about diving with a broken BCD, even though he knew it was broken. That’s just condoning unsafe practices to students and it netted him and instant 1 out of 5. That was pretty silly, but the others could have picked up those points if they had looked at the evaluation sheet carefully and just made sure they’d fulfilled all of the objectives required for full points. Again, one person was saying “Well it doesn’t matter as I still passed”. That is one way of thinking, but ordinary performances like that will make someone an ordinary instructor. There is no way in the world that I am settling for being just “ordinary” after all the effort and thought I’ve put into this. So with those thoughts in mind I made my teaching presentation and got 5 out of 5. An improvement on the previous day’s presentation, a flawless day marks-wise, and a reasonable satisfied Dave went to lunch. The rest of the day was filled with presentations by our Course Director, which were interesting but I will refrain from talking about them on here. Instead, I’ll zoom forward in time to today’s events.
Today was the last day of evaluations in the IDC, and again we headed down to the beach at Chaweng. I don’t know why, but I felt more nervous about these open water presentations than I did for the first ones. Open water presentations always throw up more challenges than confined water ones, and you’ve got to be on your toes constantly. Luckily, I was feeling much better health-wise today and reasonably ready for things. I also had the rather dubious honour of making my presentations first. Better to go first and attempt to set a benchmark than wait and just get more nervous by other peoples’ successes or failures. My briefing went pretty well I think and so I kitted up and headed into the water under blue skies. Swimming out while crazy tourists (damn gaijin!) on jetskis zoom past far too closely is very annoying, but something you’ve got to live with here. I had one surface skill (weight belt removal & replacement) and a 5-point descent. They went ok, although with the surface skill I felt that I’d drifted a bit too much, even though I’d noticed and said we should go back to the group. I really should have been keeping hold of the float or line though. As for the descent, it was acceptable, although I didn’t direct my certified assistant in a way I was satisfied with, and I left them in limbo a little. My skills were then over so I had the rest of the time underwater (about 70 minutes in total) to think over what I’d done and what mistakes I may or may not have made. Got out of the water at around 4pm and was first in line to make my debriefing. I made it and was very surprised when I was told I’d got full marks in both skills. I am definately counting that as my “get out of jail free card”, as I thought I’d done much worse. But once again, I made mistakes and I’ll learn from them. Hopefully I can get to the IE and come up with some performances like that. Everyone did pretty well, although there was a rope skill which the candidates messed up. Our Course Director had a go at us for that and rightly so. It’s something we should be able to do without thinking about it, and even with gloves on it shouldn’t be a problem. I think the thing quite a few people don’t seem to realise is that our Course Director doesn’t just want us to go to the IE with the skills and knowledge to pass. He wants us to go, knowing that we’ll breeze through the exams and evaluations, and excel. Once again it’s the difference between being acceptable and being better than you have to be. I am definately an advocate of the latter, and hopefully I can instill that in the others too.
So, tomorrow is the closing of the IDC, and a final counselling session before the IE starts in 2 days on Koh Tao. Depending on what happens tomorrow, this could be my last blog session for a few days as I don’t think I’ll take my laptop with me. So keep your fingers crossed for me and I’ll be in touch on the 17th with reports on how I did. Take care, and dive safely.
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