January 29 - Australia: Cairns
PADI Assistant Instructor Course - Day 1
Today was the first day of our IDC (Instructor Development Course) program. The course lasts from Jan 29 - Feb 9. This week is the AI (Assistant Instructor) course, to be taught by AnnaMarie (a.k.a. "Chookie"). Next week is the OWSI (Open Water Scuba Instructor) course, to be taught by Vic. There are two different classes going for the IDC right now. One is the Japanese class, and the other is the English class. The Japanese class has about 6 students, and our class has 11.
We showed up at DSDD at 9:00 for the beginning of our course. There were a few people we knew, but most of the class of 11 students we didn't know. First on the itinerary was to work out the paperwork and the payment of the bills. So we all spent the next hour sorting out payments and credits and whatnot.
Then we made it back into the room to start the official class. We did the round of Introductions, even though most of us introduced ourselves during the payment processing. Regardless, here's the list of the usual suspects:
Tom - from London. Did his Dive Master with DSDD, and is a project manager for various investment banks
Jon - also from the UK. He also did his Dive Master with DSDD.
Yoshi - from Japan, but is doing the AI/OWSI in English. Pretty impressive, considering the Japanese class is right across the hall and that would probably come more naturally to her.
Ellie - from the UK. She did her DM on the west coast of Thailand.
Sauf - from London. He did his DM here with DSDD and was "sucked into" the DSDD marketing machine. So that's how he ended up in the IDC program.
Cloe - from London. She's an IT Programmer on a break. She also told me earlier that she was in NYC in October for a memorial service for one of her best friends who was in the WTC on 9/11.
Jamie - from the UK. He's been a DM for six years, but has only been in Cairns for a few months.
Ray - from Melbourne. He works for Taka Dive (another dive shop) and wants to be an instructor for them.
David - from Sterling, Scotland. He says he "likes cold diving and likes to pick up my dinner on the way back to the boat".
Chookie - our instructor. She was getting her PhD in the UK when she took a scuba course and hasn't looked back since.
Vic - our instructor for the OWSI. He's from Zimbabwe and has been teaching for quite a while. He's course director and a bigwig here at DSDD.
So that's the story with our fellow classmates. After that, we went right into our first lecture. Chookie tends to go off on tangents - although they're often good tangents - but this basically means that we'll probably never get out of here on schedule. The morning's lectures were on the Course Orientation and "Learning, Instruction, and the PADI System".
At 1:40, we finally broke for lunch. Jon and I raced home and inhaled leftover pizza and pita sandwiches. Then we raced back to DSDD for the 2:25 start of the next class. The afternoon's lecture was "Develop Knowledge Development Presentations". We'll be practicing our classroom presentations for the remainder of the week.
No Unauthorized Breaks
Chookie doesn't give us many breaks during lectures, and Jon - who drinks gallons of water because of his marathon training - needs to take frequent potty breaks. At only point, he couldn't wait any more and quietly left the room. When AnnaMarie noticed that he'd left, she said "We'll just stop here and wait for Jon to get back before we move on." I'm not kidding - I almost fell out of my chair in shock. There was a good two minutes of complete silence as we waited. As one of the other 10 people in the class, I was pissed that class was stopped just because one person had to pee. (Regardless of the fact that I am married to said person.) Of course, I can't say anything about this because AnnaMarie is our evaluator as well as instructor, and to piss her off might be detrimental to the course. But this long Moment of Silence, combined with the fact that we were horribly behind schedule already, really REALLY ticked me off. I sat there and fumed for much of the rest of the lecture.
Finally, after promising to give us a break for 45 minutes, we finally got a break at 5:00. Remember, lecture started at 2:25. Ouch. After our break, we were back in lecture until 6:30. I was in a better mood by this time, but a little annoyed that we wouldn't get a dinner break before beginning our skills circuit. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is going to be the normal schedule for the rest of the week, so I might as well suck it up and get used to it. No one else seems to be complaining.
Skills Circuit
We separated the class into two groups. Jon and I are in "Group A" with Tom, Sauf, and the other Jon. The remaining six are in "Group B". When we got into the pool, we realized that we might be at a slight disadvantage being in Group A as the other three guys were trained as Dive Masters here at DSDD. So they're more attuned to the quirks and little requirements of each skill. This is natural, since they've been through Chookie's skills circuit a few times before. So we feel a bit remedial because we were certified in Thailand where the general requirement was "Don't drown" as opposed to "Point your right index finger to the inflator button when prompting students to inflate BCD." Of course, this is hardly rocket science so it's not like we're worried. But we'll be watching our teammates for their skills demonstrations so we can hopefully pick up some pointers.
We presented the first few skills with Vic. Remember that the skills circuit is not just to do the skills, but to do them slowly, perfectly, and exaggerated as if demonstrating to a group of students. During Vic's circuit, we did Giant Stride Entry, Fin Pivot (manual and inflator button), BCD Remove and Replace (surface and underwater), Mask remove and Replace, Weight Belt Remove and Replace (surface and underwater), and Hover.
Then we swapped groups and demonstrated for AnnaMarie. For her, we did Snorkel-Regulator Exchange, Buddy Breathing, and Free Flow.
Healthy Dinner
We didn't finish the skills circuit until 9:30 and we were starving. We also had homework to do, as we'd all been assigned a Knowledge presentation topic for tomorrow. So Jon and I figured we'd be up late preparing. we went straight to McDonald's and got dinner. I ran in to order and Jon waited in the truck. Here, he had an epiphany while watching a bunch of young kids hanging out on the corner: we're so "old" that we can't tell the difference between teenagers and young twenty-somethings. This used to be such a clear-cut distinction. But no longer. Now they all just look like "kids". So sad!
We went home, ate our healthy dinner, and worked on our presentations. Jon finished around 11:00, and I was up until 11:30.