What do you wish your instructor had told you?

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dinasaurus

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Last weekend, I went for a quarry dive with my husband-it was both of our first times diving without a guide, and only the second time we've gone diving together. (I'm counting our 10-dive Australian trip as one event.) On our second dive of the day, we were swimming around surveying a helicopter. When I looked back to check on him, as I did every minute or so as usual, he was GONE. Vanished. I frantically started looking everywhere for him, swam around the helicopter twice, then started surveying the floor of the quarry for signs of his body. No sign of him anywhere. Probably only lasted 45 seconds, but it felt like forever. Just when I was about to head for the surface and scream bloody murder, he appeared in front of me. Apparently, he was floating just above the whole scene, but was having equalization issues-so as I swam deeper and deeper looking for him, he couldn't follow. He watched helplessly, seeing the whole thing and how freaked out I was getting-willing me the whole time to just think to glance upward, but of course, I didn't.

So, that was when I learned my first "non-instructor" lesson: When you can't find your buddy, look up!

I later got some laughs from other certified friends, who said that was the first thing their instructor told them. I'm sure it's all a matter of personal experience-there's so many rules and lessons to impart, you just have to learn some of them on your own.

That being said, what were your most useful "self-taught" lessons? I figure this might help me (and other divers) avoid other easily remedied panic attacks in the future!
 
We try to teach our students to think about the field of vision in a mask, and realize they have to stay within that field of vision for their buddy to be able to see them. One of the most common mistakes people make is wanting to dive behind and above their buddy, because they can easily see that person from there; but they can't BE seen, and it can cause a great deal of anxiety. Indeed, you have to remember that diving is in three dimensions, and up is one of them, and you have to look there!

My biggest "Aha!" moment as a new diver was attending one of NW Grateful Diver's Gas Management seminars. I sat and listened to tool for dive planning that would make SURE I never ran out of gas . . . and wondered why nobody had taught me any of that before.
 
I wish I had known that my instructor bought new gear nearly every year and sold his "last year" model, so I could be on the wait list.
 
Not something I wish was said, but something I wish was done in my OW class, was multiple repetitions of the basic skills. I sincerely wish I was taught the way I have been taught to teach. I essentially only had to demonstrate the essential skills 1 time in the pool & 1 time in open water. I fumbled my way through it, but was nowhere near comfortable doing it, when I was certified. I was terrified to lose or flood my mask. It took going to another instructor, who worked very hard with me to get me comfortable. When I teach a course, we repeat skills every time we get into the water, a lot of times multiple times while in the water. When my students complete their certifications, I know they are comfortable & their skills are second nature to them.
 
Well, of course there were a lot of things. But two points to remember are that OW courses are "short" these days--only so many hours of class & pool. Also, there is a lot of stuff in reasonable detail in the manual you can just re-read. I feel my instructor was excellent (her being a school teacher was a big plus--very good with people). The one thing that stands out really was neither her nor the shop's fault--A much discussed biggee- proper weighting. But at the pool we could only use 8 or 12 pound belts with shot so as not to damage the bottom when dropping them. We "simulate" a proper weight check by simply using the BC. Also, if it's May, June or Nov. here in way less than 50F checkout water temps., you're not going to fart around with weights when there are all those skills to complete. And of course, all the students dive wet and some of the pros too. I imagine she did emphasize that we should do the weight check properly on our own ASAP.
 
I wish my instructor had told me I was a terrible diver and I would never go any further.

Would have saved me a fortune!
 
To clarify, if they actually *did* say something that was really good advice, I guess I'll take that too! I didn't mean to imply that this should be a "things my instructor did wrong" thread. Just figured it would be good for those overlooked things that end up being really useful knowledge.
 
One thing to mention about your situation. Try not to get frantic. Simply start your one minute timer, and search. When the one minute timer expires, go to the surface, and search/wait for one minute for your buddy to appear. If you talked this over with your buddy ahead of time, you will almost always find him one way or another, especially in a quarry. In this case, you would have definitely found him on the way up.

If, after one minute, your buddy does not appear (extremely unlikely with a responsible buddy), immediately get the aid of other divers. If you are in a quarry, there should be plenty around to help.
 
I wish my instructor had grabbed me 10 years ago and threw a bc/reg on me so I hadn't wasted so much time not diving
 
My instructor told us that people who did stupid things died. Showed us a whole bunch of newspaper articles and told us why each one was dead.

What she didn't tell us was that, regardless of how clever or careful we thought we were, at some point we'd break each one of those rules and make some really, really dumb decisions, and hopefully we'd come out of it okay. But maybe not.

I've been averaging participating in a rescue or an assist once every 25 dives. Towing people in, dragging people through surf zones, talking people down at the surface, convincing people to call the dive while you're still at the car... it's sort of ridiculous.

Which isn't to say that I'm immune. I've broken almost every rule I swore I wouldn't, although I'm not going to enumerate them (plus I can't measure up to that post RJP-san made a while back), and every time it was intentional. I'm not saying it's better to not pay attention than to decide that hitting the shore with 200psi is a good idea, just that I think most people, in the classroom, find it very easy to nod along to rules then later recall that there really is no SCUBA police.

As a side point, one of my good friends once called a dive on behalf of his buddy who was having trouble. The buddy insisted that everything was fine on his/her end to the point that my mate had to be pretty insistent that he was done. He caught crap for it, but I gained a lot of respect for him for that. I've failed to do the same thing on numerous occasions.
 
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