I drank the GUE Fundies Kool-Aid and survived!!

[Clammy]

Oh, and sorry for the minor hijack BUT...

For anyone here that's interested in taking fundies in Southern California soon... care to join me?
Please PM!

Okay, hijack over.

 

[HenrikBP]

Quick question: Prior to the class, had you two dove together often? Or did you meet during the class? Just wondering...in case I should start diving with like-minded buddies who are considering a class. Thanks!

Sam and I and a 3rd team mate had been diving together at Dutch for a few weekends - 6 - 10 dives maybe - and we pretty much spent all those dives practicing on (well, slightly above ) the platform. But while we were all within a ~20'x20' square during these dives and kept an eye on each other, we did not learn to dive as a Team until the course.

During class there is an entirely different emphasis on Team diving and awareness of your Team. The priorities throughout the week were 1) Team 2) Buoyancy 3) Trim and then as a distant 4th came the skills. So even having dived together, IMO, didn't prepare us for that very fundamental change in perspective.

We also got switched around and the Teams mixed and matched during the week, so you most likely will not do all the dives with your regular buddy.

But if you are planning and preparing for class, practicing the skills Sam mentioned will be time well spent. And unless you dive with a like minded buddy, he/she is not likely to put up with you hanging in the same spot dive after dive

Henrik

 

[b1gcountry]

KingPatzer-
Where are you located?

Tom

 

[jenth]

For anyone here that's interested in taking fundies in Southern California soon... care to join me?
Please PM!

Will send you a PM!

During class there is an entirely different emphasis on Team diving and awareness of your Team. The priorities throughout the week were 1) Team 2) Buoyancy 3) Trim and then as a distant 4th came the skills. So even having dived together, IMO, didn't prepare us for that very fundamental change in perspective.

We also got switched around and the Teams mixed and matched during the week, so you most likely will not do all the dives with your regular buddy.

But if you are planning and preparing for class, practicing the skills Sam mentioned will be time well spent. And unless you dive with a like minded buddy, he/she is not likely to put up with you hanging in the same spot dive after dive

I'll be adding some of her skills to my list of things to practice. Glad to hear that the Team aspect of it is so highly stressed. Thanks for all the recap!

 

[ringmod65]

The point re: baseline skills for Fundies bears repeating. I took the same DIR-F class as Sam and Henrik. Not having mastered the requisite buoyancy and trim skills PRIOR to class, I flamed out. Spectacularly.

While I did my very best to maintain a positive, cheerful outlook - and especially to be as helpful a teammate as possible despite my prodigious shortcomings - the experience has left me absolutely crushed.

I apologize to my classmates for taking up their time as I struggled with the most basic of skills.

 

[trogloxene]

The point re: baseline skills for Fundies bears repeating. I took the same DIR-F class as Sam and Henrik. Not having mastered the requisite buoyancy and trim skills PRIOR to class, I flamed out. Spectacularly.

While I did my very best to maintain a positive, cheerful outlook - and especially to be as helpful a teammate as possible despite my prodigious shortcomings - the experience has left me absolutely crushed.

I apologize to my classmates for taking up their time as I struggled with the most basic of skills.

You are not alone - I feel your pain. I recently took GUE-F and I definitely felt like a "third wheel" most of the time. I felt like I was holding back my team - although they will deny it because they are polite. I honestly think my skills were better during my OW check out dives Why? Because I was relaxed.

Gas management and dive planning was straight forward and somehow I managed to limp my way through the skills portion of class. I completed all of the skills - just not satisfactorily.

Can I recover an unconscious diver? Deploy an SMB? Donate my long hose to an OOG diver? Do a valve drill? Do the basic 5? You bet! Can I do those skills and stay within 2 1/2 feet of target depth? Not yet. Can I hover motionless in perfect trim? Not yet. However, now I know where I stand and I know where the bar is set at. I have been given the tools to succeed, now I need to get out and sharpen these tools by diving and practicing.

The pressure I put on myself while I was on camera definitely did not help my cause - and my instructor noted how I was much more relaxed when I was not on camera. He was always telling us to "relax and have fun"

I am relaxed now that class is over

Sean

 

[ScubaSam]

Quick question: Prior to the class, had you two dove together often? Or did you meet during the class? Just wondering...in case I should start diving with like-minded buddies who are considering a class. Thanks!

I believe I met Henrik the day of the demo in early June and I learned from demo day that I was not good at hovering so a few of us decided to practice that skill until class. Hovering while keeping your trim and buoyancy are key.

You do realize that that's just your fan club right Sam?

Brian, I thought I had a larger fan club than 800+, I'm rather disappointed in myself now.

The point re: baseline skills for Fundies bears repeating. I took the same DIR-F class as Sam and Henrik. Not having mastered the requisite buoyancy and trim skills PRIOR to class, I flamed out. Spectacularly.

While I did my very best to maintain a positive, cheerful outlook - and especially to be as helpful a teammate as possible despite my prodigious shortcomings - the experience has left me absolutely crushed.

I apologize to my classmates for taking up their time as I struggled with the most basic of skills.

Dave - Apologies are not necessary and I am NOT being polite when I say this. I am being totally honest with you. You did not take up any of my time, nor the others, you were a fellow classmate who paid to be there like the rest of us so stop talking garbage. During one of the earlier video play back evenings, Bob said that even though you were struggling you were a great team mate being the safety diver for the team as they ran their drills. You stuck in there, you did not check out. Bob made a point of saying it to the class, and the class agreed. Maybe my jet lag is contagious and you're not remember the events of our class but Bob said that...Henrik back me up here.

Videos do not lie which means you did not flame out spectacularly. I saw videos of you in the proper position so celebrate your successes, do not diminish them. Bob kept saying that in class, celebrate the successes no matter how small they should be celebrated. Once the weighing and wing issue got sorted out you found what Bob called the "sweet spot" and you were floating effortless in the water, I saw the videos!!! Videos DO NOT lie.

I along with the others remember how proudly you beamed, not smiled but beamed, when you surfaced from your last few dives. I know the others noticed because at Friday's dinner (which you missed) we watched that day's video and the others noted that the look on your face after you found the "sweet spot" was priceless! All of us at that dinner could feel your accomplishment and were so happy for you even if you cannot feel that now.

You have every right to feel absolutely crushed because you actually care about your diving, you have passion for it which is why you feel so badly now. I can meet you at Dutch when your schedule allows and just hover with you. I need the practice and you are a good team mate. You were great to me when I was frustrated throughout the class and I never forget kindness bestowed on me.

 

[b1gcountry]

I apologize to my classmates for taking up their time as I struggled with the most basic of skills.

I'm trying to find a good way to say this, so I'll just say it. I did well in Fundies. Some of my teamates didn't do as well. Having taken it with someone who was struggling with buoyancy, I think it enriched my team skills and SA in a way that it wouldn't have if I had taken it with people who didn't struggle. You dive in teams of two or three most of the time. That means only 1/2 or 1/3 of the problems are going to happen to you. So most of the emergencies are going to happen to your teamates. When you take Fundies with someone who struggles through it, it helps you to learn how best to help other people with their problems. When I practice my skills, 99% of the time, I'm worried about my performance. Taking a class like Fundies shows you the importance of the performance of the team as a whole.

If there weren't struggling students, it wouldn't be the same class.

...and BTW, it sounds like you had a class with 3 passes, and one provisional. Usually, it's the other way around.

Tom

 

[ligersandtions]

Quick question: Prior to the class, had you two dove together often? Or did you meet during the class? Just wondering...in case I should start diving with like-minded buddies who are considering a class. Thanks!

You're already diving with like-minded buddies (many of them very solid in the water....thankfully cause I can pretend to be solid when I'm around them!). You're well on your way to being ready for Fundies/Essentials.

As for diving with the buddies that you will dive with in your class, I can't answer that yet (but I'll let you know how it goes diving with people in class that you've never met before). I suspect, though, that the more important thing is that they subscribe to the same philosophy, at least for the intro classes.


This thread is great. Thanks Sam and Henrik....and everyone else who has recapped their recent classes. It's a shame that DIR/GUE sometimes gets a bad rap -- stories like yours should help to clear the air and make people realize that it can be a very enjoyable experience. Thanks!

 

[ScubaSam]

I also found out during class that I cannot articulate my head as far back as others which compromises my field of vision. What that means is I cannot let my team mates get too far above me in the water otherwise I lose sight of them. I was constantly compromising my trim and buoyancy to keep an eye on my team. Bob would point out each time my team mates got above me and every time he reminded them, I felt so badly that they were being corrected for my limited field of vision. I felt awful that Bob was adding my limited field of vision to my team's growing lists of tasks to handle during each dive. I struggled with buoyancy, trim and back kick throughout the class. There were many dives where I felt I was holding back my team and felt like an absolute loser.

The very first day in the water, I struggled with the propulsion on the surface and got pulled aside for one-on-one attention by Bob, then by Steve and then again by Bob. I thought, "Dammit, I'm being pulled into remedial class already and it's our very first time in the water." And I was also the only female in the class so the last thing I wanted to do was slow down my classmates.

I kept telling myself, "I'm here to learn, I'm here to learn, I'm here to learn, if I came to impress them I would not need this class, I'm here to learn, I'm here to learn...better to make the mistakes under Bob's watchful eye cause I'm here to learn."

I ran that "I'm here to learn" line through my head a 100+ times in my head daily! Heck I think I may have even muttered it out loud a few times.

Everyone who is reading, or lurking in, this thread, chime in with your experience in your fundies class, you're not hijacking the thread, please chime in. It will help everyone who is considering fundies or who has gone through fundies.