Last night, I was in pool assisting drysuit course. A drysuit is an essential equipment if anyone wants to dive in Sweden. My first drysuit dive was during my divemaster education and it was a quite interesting experience to see yourself in one hand as an experienced diver and on the other hand upside down in the pool with lots of air on your feet trying to understand how much gas puts you to this position.
This specific situation happens when you have excess gas on your legs. Since we have built in shoes as part of the diving suit the gas traps in and very little movement can put you this upside-down position in the water. As part of dry suit education, students learn how to recover from this position. It is one of the skills to be able to complete the course.
So last night, we had students in the pool who need to first go upside down and then recover from that position. Like other underwater skills, this skill also puts a pressure on students, and they, surely, want to pass the skill. I find it fascinating to see how (most of the cases) people want to do the skill once and be done with it. I, on the other hand, suggest to do it as much as possible and try to fail and recover and fail again and recover again. This way you get experience in a controlled environment next to the instructors instead of being alone somewhere out there. However, students feel quite hesitant to even though they are done already.
This made me think about our whole education life, you know. Most students want to be done with the courses, training, education and never look into that book again, especially when the course is a difficult one. The idea of the education through is to give students the tools to recover when you are upside down. And it is not only for once.
Do not afraid this much to fail, as Mary Pickford said:
“Failure is not falling down, it is not getting up again”.
It is inevitable that you will one way or other, today or tomorrow, somehow will fail. Try to learn how you will get back on your feet!
Didem Gürdür Broo 