I've had some wonderful mentors over the years ... and done my best to be a mentor whenever I can.
When I first started diving, finding dive buddies was the hardest thing. I joined a dive club, but they always seemed to be planning dives that were "beyond my experience level". After a month of doing easy dives at the training site with someone from my OW class, I finally met a guy who said he'd be happy to take me diving. Randy was an old-timer ... at the time something over 8000 dives under his belt ... and was completely unabashed about answering my questions and helping me improve my diving skills. He showed me things and explained a bunch of topics that were never covered in my class ... and I experienced any number of "AHAH" moments under his tutelage.
About a year after I started diving I joined ScubaBoard ... thanks to this fellow I'd met a couple weeks earlier on a dive trip to British Columbia. His screen name was Uncle Pug. Over the next three or four years, that guy taught me more about diving than I ever realized there was to learn. The most important lessons didn't involve skills so much as just how to THINK about my dives ... although there was plenty of skills work too. It was Uncle Pug who took me on my first doubles dive ... who patiently helped me regain my self-confidence after a thorough reality check my first time through Fundies, and who ultimately taught me how to do a back kick. If I had to choose one person who's had the most influence on me as a diver, Uncle Pug would be that person hands-down.
Fast-forward a couple years. By now I've become a diving instructor, but still actively mentoring newer divers either through my dive club's Big Buddy program or simply through chance meetings with someone who looks like they could use a helping hand. I started noticing this one local diver who had become active on ScubaBoard, and whose posts got me thinking that I would really like to meet this person and dive with her. We arranged to meet through one of our Big Buddy dives and go dive together. Her enthusiasm was positively infectious ... and her skills were just awful. We spent some time working on that ... and she improved rapidly, although it was constant effort to keep her from beating herself up with an incessent need for perfection. Then one day I mentioned that I thought she'd really enjoy the DIR approach to diving ... and so the Borg Queen was born.
She's off diving in the Red Sea this week, and probably won't even see this thread until she gets back. So I'll do a bit of promotion by saying that I've never known anyone who puts more effort into "paying it forward" by mentoring new divers than Lynne does ... or who gets more enjoyment out of helping someone go from a struggling newbie to a competent, self-confident diver. I see her as kind've the third generation of our mentoring family ... Uncle Pug -> me -> TSandM ... and I know that people she's helped are out there cheerfully passing what she helped them learn on to other new divers. That's how it's supposed to work.
Mentors are, in many ways, as important to diving development as a competent dive instructor. Classes are structured, and in many ways present skills and information in a limited environment. Mentors operate in the real world ... in a context where there are no time or curriculum constraints. They serve as a bridge between knowledge and understanding.
A good mentor is worth their weight in gold ... and those who are lucky enough to find one can shorten their learning curve considerably ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
