Common Fundies Mistakes

[Mr Carcharodon]

Remember if you do not have a long class, continuing support of an instructor, or if you do not have an active local community to dive with it will be difficult to meet the goals of the class. Five day classes have been mentioned repeatedly, but classes longer than four days are not required by current standards, were not the norm in the past, and certainly are not a given. So ask questions before committing. If you can have one or more of the above you are golden, but do do your homework.

[Rainer]

I found the info on gue.com which should be fact, unless some policy has changed since 8/10:

I just took a course and got a “Provisional” rating. What does that mean?

Submitted by Kady Smith on Fri, 08/20/2010 - 12:34. A provisional rating means that you didn’t fail a course, but you still have skills to work on before you are evaluated as “Pass,” and are eligible for official GUE certification. Divers should be aware that the original instructor is solely responsible for updating this rating. An instructor may make specific arrangements with another GUE instructor but the original instructor is ultimately responsible for upgrading their student’s provisional rating through the GUE website. The time and fees associated with provisional upgrades are entirely at the discretion of the instructor, however HQ requires you to pay for course registration again if the time since the original course has exceeded 6 months.

I believe the instructor has to approve you doing any re-eval for a provisional after 6 months. My C2 instructor was emphatic that we had to convert our provisionals in six months, period.

It's completely up to the instructor if you can convert a provisional after six months. I know some instructors will NOT give extensions. I would definitely not count on paying $75 and thinking you have an unlimited time frame to upgrade a provisional.

[Ben_ca]

Prepare both your mind and body for long days. The class will be taxing both mentally and physically. Work on fitness. Swimming, running and being fit in general will help you deal with the stress of the class. Mentally prepare for the ups and downs. Don't dwell on the failures of the last dive... talk about what happened and regroup as a team. Holding grudges and blaming each other will only tear the team apart.

Encouragement and support go a long way to making the class a success.

[Ben_ca]

Prepare both your mind and body for long days. The class will be taxing both mentally and physically. Work on fitness. Swimming, running and being fit in general will help you deal with the stress of the class. Mentally prepare for the ups and downs. Don't dwell on the failures of the last dive... talk about what happened and regroup as a team. Holding grudges and blaming each other will only tear the team apart.

Encouragement and support go a long way to making the class a success.

(reworded to reflect OP's intent)

Going into class without good stress management tools.
Prepare both your mind and body for long days. The class will be taxing both mentally and physically. Work on fitness. Swimming, running and being fit in general will help you deal with the stress of the class. Mentally prepare for the ups and downs. Don't dwell on the failures of the last dive... talk about what happened and regroup as a team. Holding grudges and blaming each other will only tear the team apart.

Encouragement and support go a long way to making the class a success.

[limeyx]

I know some people disagree with this one, but I think practicing the skills before being taught how to do them properly only adds stress to the class....stress not only to the student (who's having to relearn something they've been practicing incorrectly), but also to the instructor (who has to figure out how to get the student to break a bad habit and learn a new habit simultaneously).

Was that the case with you ?

[ligersandtions]

Was that the case with you ?

Nope....I had not practiced any of the skills before I took my Essentials class and that worked out very well for me. Obviously, having taken Essentials before Fundies meant that I had practiced the skills prior to my Fundies class....but thankfully, I had been taught well, so I didn't have much in the way of un-learning bad habits.

Our third teammate, on the other hand, had 200ish dives of bad habits to break and he admits that it made things far more stressful on him than it did on either of the other two of us (one who had NOT practiced any skills before Fundies).

[GFuterfas]

I'd like to say 'Thanks' to all of you for this info. I haven't taken Fundies yet but am interested. The advice about taking Primer first might be best for me.

Thanks,
-Graham

[limeyx]

I'd like to say 'Thanks' to all of you for this info. I haven't taken Fundies yet but am interested. The advice about taking Primer first might be best for me.

Thanks,
-Graham

Graham,

You have 2 local GUE instructors. If you are already diving a Backplate/wing, and feel reasonably comfortable in them, I'd say go for it and just take fundamentals honestly.

[TSandM]

There is honestly no problem with taking Fundies at any time -- so long as you are not fixated on passing it! If you literally cannot swim a square course with a 10' depth change without corking, it's probably rather a waste of time. But if you can hover in one place long enough to watch a skills demo, and clear your mask without hitting the bottom, you're going to learn in the class. The reason people get so miserable in Fundamentals is that they go in expecting or needing to pass the first time around. When I took mine, I was danged SURE I wasn't going to pass, so I wasn't disappointed.

If you have a local instructor so that a provisional is easy to convert, I wouldn't bother with Primer first.

[lamont]

The last two of those up there really shouldn't be up to the student. They are principles that the instructor should know based on their experience and limits. I think it is unfair to expect the student to making all these decisions; at what point can a student leave it up to the instructor to figure out some of what is best for learning? I mean from what I understand going to GUE used to guarantee a great education, and now a few non-instructors on the great ScubaBoard time waster are telling newcomers to scrutinize everything including GUE veterans? Please. Be realistic.

The thing is that some students will fly in an instructor. And if they are doing it without a GUE-aware shop that is managing logistics, that means that they *have* to deal with logistics. Dive sites will be up to them, gas fills will be up to them and class size will largely be up to them -- the instructor will not have local knowledge.