February 2 - Australia: Cairns, Queensland
Assistant Instructor Course - Day 5 - CERTIFICATION DAY!!!!
This is the final day of our PADI Assistant Instructor Course. We spent the day on Reef Quest doing our Open Water presentations - pretty big deal, actually. We went to DSDD at 7:00 to get our gear and help shuttle people over to The Pier to board Reef Quest.
Our IDC Class!!! From Left to Right:
Back Row: Jon, Heidi, Elli, David, Jamie, Ray
Middle Row: Sauf, Yoshi, Tom, Jon, Chloe
Front: AnnaMarie ("Chookie") and Vic
Open Water Briefings
Today's skill on which we were evaluated were the Open Water skills. We were tasked with integrating briefings for two skills for mock students, running those skills, and debriefing the students afterwards.
Jon's skills: Buddy breathing (stationary) and fully-flooded mask
My skills: Fin Pivot (with low pressure inflator) and the Five Point Ascent
We (Group A) sat at a table with Chookie, and Group B sat with Vic. Chookie was evaluating us - of course - and this was our first attempt to conduct a scenario in the open water. So naturally, we were a bit nervous and it was all supposed to be a very serious time. But after the stress of this week, we've established a comfortable camaraderie between us, so it's a bit difficult to get through these things without cracking jokes and laughing hysterically. To Chookie's credit, she laughs right along with us and enjoys it when we have our fun. When we do it in front of Vic, he just smiles and waits for us to focus again. So today's briefing was no different. Tom cracked some good "American" jokes, Jon cracked some "Jon" jokes, and the rest of us kidded right along. But we got through the briefings without incident.
Dive #1: Norman Reef - Troppo Lounge
Depth: 9 meters
Bottom Time: 80 minutes
Visibility: 15 meters
The water surface was so calm that it looked like glass. Absolutely perfect conditions. Of course, when we do this for the Instructor Exam - which is run by PADI at an island off Cairns - the water conditions will probably be terrible. Anyway, Chookie tied a control line to the bottom and Sauf began the skills evaluation by lining up us "students" and doing the five point descent. When we got to the bottom, he did another skill with us. So we were lined up on the bottom on our knees - as students would be - and Chookie floated behind Sauf (or whoever was acting as instructor) with her "Chookie Chart", assigning us specific problems to have during the exercise. The whole idea was to evaluate us on our control of the students, our observation of skill problems, and our assessment of the student's skills. Here are the skills everyone did:
Sauf - Five Point Descent and Regulator Recovery
Tom - Buddy Breathing (stationary) and Hover
Jon Connal - Buddy Breathing (stationary) and fully flood and clear mask
Jon - Hover and Regulator Recovery
By the time the second Jon was done with his skills, most of us were down to 50 bar and Tom was at 25 bar. So we had to go up without getting around to doing my skills. Mine would have to be during the second dive. This wasn't a major problem, it just meant more time for me to have to wait. So we went back on ReefQuest, filled our tanks and grabbed some lunch.
Dive #2: Norman Reef - Shark Mountain
Depth: 9 meters
Bottom Time: 30 minutes
Visibility: 15 meters
Here, Chookie also tied up a control line and we all clustered on the bottom. Sauf was my "assistant" and I pulled out each "student" one by one to do the Fin Pivot. After that was done, I paired up Jon (my Jon) and Tom to be buddies on the Five Point Ascent. I made a point to ascend very slowly, and Jon told me later that it felt like a half-hour. Probably, but better safe than sorry. After making sure my "students" were OK on the surface, I gave Sauf the "OK" signal to swap and he came to the top while I went down for my last student. So Jon and I went ascended much the same way. Back on the surface, I congratulated everyone, finished up my "feedback" session, and was done with my skills.
Then, Chookie did an Ascent/Descent workshop with us. In this, we practiced ascending and descending with students in different manners according to PADI standards. Of course, we were all a bit giddy by this time because we were exhausted from the week of hard work and thrilled that our sessions were done. So we were goofing off big time. At one point, Jon (the Brit) acted as Instructor and took Tom and Jon (my Jon) down to the bottom as students. As he prepared them for ascent, they decided to give him a really hard time. Each time he turned to one of the, the other one would swim off. Then, as he collected that diver, the other one would swim off. Whenever he gave them the signals for "slow down" and "ascend", they would cheerfully flick him off. The rest of us observed these antics on the surface, and laughed hysterically through our snorkels. When the three of them finally got to the surface, we all spent a good 3 minutes trying to catch our collective breath.
Then we had time for a quick ten minute Fun Dive. So Jon, Tom and I swam around some of the reefs. Jon saw a shark, but Tom and I had already swam ahead so we missed it.
Debriefings
Once ReefQuest was underway again, we gave our Debriefings as if delivering them to our students. In the debriefing, we had to give some positive reinforcement, touch on each problem that was had during the skill, offer suggestions to solve the problems, and reinforce the value of learning the particular skill. After we had each finished with the Debriefing, Chookie gave us our feedback and scores. The "requirements" for the briefing/skills/debriefing sound very simple, but PADI has some standards that we must adhere to - especially during the Instructor Exam in two weeks. So we are often unhappy about getting Chookie's feedback because she scores the way that PADI scores - and it doesn't always jive with our instincts. But we have to remember that she's preparing us for the PADI Instructor Exam and is trying to help us when she marks us down. With all due respect to my testosterone-laden-teammates, this doesn't always go over well and "some people" (who shall remained unnamed) argue a bit about the points.
Regardless, we were all glad to be done with our Open Water presentations and thrilled that we all passed. Actually, we all passed with flying colors. Group B passed their presentations as well!
Standards Exam
So back in Cairns, we all headed back to DSDD to complete our final requirement: the Assistant Instructor Standards Exam. This took us about an hour and was open-book, but that means that it was even more of a pain in the butt. Basically, the questions were things such as "What's the maximum Student-Instructor Ratio for the Discover Scuba course?". They weren't intellectually complex, but our brains were all fried and none of us wanted to be thinking - much less completing an exam.
Finally, we finished and were officially christened PADI ASSISTANT INSTRUCTORS!!!!
Horrayy!!!
We dropped Tom off on our way home and then ordered pizza. Neither of us felt like cooking. So we chowed on pizza again, showered, and got ready for our celebratory night out.
The Pier
We met "the gang" at The Pier, a bar near the marina. The place was absolutely dead aside from the DSDD crew and a few other boat crews. But we didn't care. We were all just happy to be there and to be celebrating our new Assistant Instructor status.
The Stellar Group A: Tom, Jon, Heidi, Sauf, and Jon
We hung out on the wide porch right on the water and chatted. Somewhere in northern Cairns some fireworks were going off, and we decided that they in celebration of our success. Things also got a little crazy:
David the nutty Scot demonstrates the benefits of a shirt with snaps as opposed to buttons
At 10:30, The Pier (sad place that it is) shut down so we motivated and went to PJ O'Brian's (not the same as the New Orleans one). We stayed there until after midnight, when we said our goodbyes and went home to crash.