It's hard for somebody who hasn't taken GUE classes to understand what they are.
I've taken several, and not passed all of them. I've spent a LOT of money on the classes, and sometimes I have been pretty bitter about not passing them. In the end, with the passage of enough time, I've been able to see that what seem like virtually insanely picky standards, when I am trying to meet them, are actually requirements that, if I got that good, would mean I wasn't just a competent diver, but an elegant, or as David Rhea put it, "polished" one. It's very hard to admit you aren't that good. It's hard to acknowledge that the fitness requirements, non-smoking among them, are actually reasonable for the kind of diving they're trying to train people to do.
There are very few people who wouldn't learn something from Fundies. In my husband's class was a man with quite literally thousands of dives, hundreds of technical dives, in conditions unimaginable to us recreational divers. His personal skills undoubtedly trumped his instructor's. Where he didn't have the solidity was in being part of a team. He learned something from the class, too.
Fundies, if you have a local instructor, tends to run in the five to 600 dollar range, and will almost ceratinly be the best money you have spent on dive instruction, especially if you are not already technically trained.
I have my personal issues with a few GUE things, but GUE and UTD are two agencies that teach good things and teach them really, really well.
I've taken several, and not passed all of them. I've spent a LOT of money on the classes, and sometimes I have been pretty bitter about not passing them. In the end, with the passage of enough time, I've been able to see that what seem like virtually insanely picky standards, when I am trying to meet them, are actually requirements that, if I got that good, would mean I wasn't just a competent diver, but an elegant, or as David Rhea put it, "polished" one. It's very hard to admit you aren't that good. It's hard to acknowledge that the fitness requirements, non-smoking among them, are actually reasonable for the kind of diving they're trying to train people to do.
There are very few people who wouldn't learn something from Fundies. In my husband's class was a man with quite literally thousands of dives, hundreds of technical dives, in conditions unimaginable to us recreational divers. His personal skills undoubtedly trumped his instructor's. Where he didn't have the solidity was in being part of a team. He learned something from the class, too.
Fundies, if you have a local instructor, tends to run in the five to 600 dollar range, and will almost ceratinly be the best money you have spent on dive instruction, especially if you are not already technically trained.
I have my personal issues with a few GUE things, but GUE and UTD are two agencies that teach good things and teach them really, really well.
