wanderlust

the mit undergrad experience has been described as 'drinking from the fire hose' - i started my divemaster course this past monday and it's been pretty crazy thus far. perhaps not up to the fire hose level, but it could be described as 'drinking from the snorkel', which, incidentally is foreshadowing of what happens later in the DM course (more on that later).

part of the craziness is due to the organized chaos of the dive shop - UDC is the first and biggest dive shop on utila and there's a constant flux of people of all levels of diving coming through and taking classes, from open water all the way up to instructor. the instructors are all first-rate and great people, but they're also constantly running around teaching courses, manning the shop or meeting the ferry in the hopes of attracting new dive students. some of the other DMTs have complained about not getting enough personal attention, but i guess i'm still used to the grad student mentality of needing to track my advisor down when i need to talk. once you find who you're looking for, they're usually more than happy to give you the time you need, whether right then or at an arranged later time. the key to surviving (and being happy) here is to be flexible and realize that schedules are more suggested rather than actual realities.

each week, a new DMT course starts on monday. the DMT class of the week of january 28 consists of me, mark (from my rescue class) and nacho (from chile). our DMT orientation was scheduled for 4.30p. i arrived a bit early, only to find out it had been changed to 4p. scheduling changes usually appear as messages on one of the many whiteboards around UDC, but since i hadn't been around the shop until then that day, i didn't know about it. not a big deal, since mark didn't either. tash told us no worries - instructors have to be flexible as well, after all. we then found out who our mentors were - although you're taught by all the instructors, each DMT is assigned one as a mentor to see you through the program. presently, there are 3 people in charge of training the DMTs - tash, frank and tracy. having been around for a week already, i'd heard from the DMTs ahead of me about each one. tash is super smiley (almost scarily so), does things by the book and demands perfection. frank is extremely experienced and knowledgeable, but really busy and hard to pin down when you need help. tracy has a lot of experience as well but isn't as strict and is more approachable. the instructors are on some sort of rotation, so i was told initially that frank would be my mentor. however, on monday, i found out it would be tracy instead. i'm pretty happy about the switch - i think frank ended up with nacho instead because he speaks spanish (frank is from guatemala). tracy is the first person i met at UDC when i arrived and taught my advanced open water course and of the three, i feel most comfortable with her. having frank sounded as if it'd be like working with one of my old grad school advisors, professor peraire (mom and dad, that's advisor b), which was great fun, but also draining.

we had our orientation and were given our DMT manuals, which contain all our exam answer sheets, evaluation sheets, a huge list of all the DM requirements and lots of other relevant information about the course. then we jumped right into the first chapter of our divemaster manual textbook (yes, i have homework and reading to do all the time now) before being dismissed.

tuesday morning, mark and i managed to squeeze in some fun dives with cross creek, UDC's sister dive shop. the dives were chill (i saw a HUGE crab) and we spent most of the time on the boat listening to one of the cross creek divemasters describe to us how mind-blowingly awesome argentinian ice cream is. in the afternoon, we met with tracy to cover another chapter in our manuals about how to work with dive students. it actually sounds very similar to being a TA, so i'm pretty psyched to get to start assisting in classes as part of my internship. on wednesday, we covered a long and boring chapter on how to supervise certified divers. after each chapter, we had to take an exam - multiple choice and pretty easy.

thursday was a long day - we met at 6.30a, supposedly to have our skills circuit briefing. instead, we were told the schedule had been rearranged and we covered another chapter out of the manual with frank. at 9a, we got our skills circuit briefing from tash and got started with the actual skills circuit at 11a. the point of the skills circuit is that we have to go through the 20 basic scuba skills you learn in open water and be able to do them with demonstration quality. the reason is that if you assist on courses as a divemaster, you would need to show students how to do these skills underwater. we then became mute for the next couple hours - the goal is that you should be able to demonstrate the skill clearly to someone who speaks a different language from you. and obviously, there's no talking underwater. oh, and we had to make it look easy. our first skill was equipment setup, which we did on the dock. tash watched us and i was nervous since i'd heard she is such a hard grader. things were proceeding okay until i turned on my air before connecting the low pressure inflator hose and had to backtrack. despite doing everything else correctly, that out of sequence mistake got me a score of 2 out of 5 (usually a 3 is passing, but at UDC, they require us to get a 4 or 5). off to a great start.. frank then joined us and we proceeded to demo buddy checks and then deep-water entry. the next set of skills were underwater. tash or frank would show us how to do it (tash must have been a flight attendant in a previous life) and then we would try it ourselves. if we made a mistake, they'd stop us, remind us of what we'd done wrong and make us repeat the skill. i did an entire mask removal and replacement well except forgetting to brush my hair out of the way and had to do it all over again (by the way, i was pleased my contacts didn't fall out underwater). i felt clumsy and like i was doing terribly and as time went on, started getting cold. we were probably underwater for about 90 minutes - towards the end, my thought process was something like this..

..brr, cold, please please let the next skill be 5-point ascent. drat, it's buddy breathing. okay, watching their buddy breathing demo - must remember all details so i only have to do it once, but i'm so cold. crap, i just missed that whole sequence of steps. uh oh, now they're pointing at me to demonstrate it. okay, buddy breathe, buddy breathe, buddy breathe.. all right, done with buddy breathing. come on, 5-point ascent! rats, it's CESA (controlled emergency swimming ascent).. etc.

finally, 5-point ascent came and i happily surfaced. we then did a few surface skills before getting out for our debrief. tash started off by saying some positive things to us, but we'd learned the other day that they HAVE to start off with something nice to encourage us, so we were skeptical. however, it turns out we actually did better than we thought we did. i only have to redo 2 skills - the equipment setup and underwater weight belt removal and replacement (my weights weren't distributed properly and i kept falling over). by the time all this was over, it was 4p and we were utterly exhausted, but happy to have it over. that night, we went to the weekly UDC bbq and were able to relax and hang out.

all right, back to 'drinking from the snorkel'. the main event at the bbq is the snorkel test, which occurs if anyone has finished their DM that week. this final test is not something they advertise ahead of time, and i am quite frightened at the prospect of having to do it in a few weeks. the general procedure is that they seat you on a stool and give you a mask and snorkel with a makeshift funnel attached to the top of the snorkel. they then ask if you'd like coke or sprite, and proceed to pour the opposite of what you asked for along with rum into the funnel. then, it's all topped off with a beer. i think the goal is to last for 30s, but your judges can deem your performance inadequate and make you repeat. if you do exceptionally badly, they threaten to fill your mask with beer and make you clear it. (i haven't actually seen this happen yet, but it sounds terrible.) i am definitely not looking forward to this particular rite of passage, but i've been gathering tips on how i can do it without actually drinking a whole lot. and hey, if i could get through qualifying and generals exams, i bet i can get through this too.

on friday, our one activity was taking our swim test. we arrive at 9.30a and of course, it is the one morning when the water is super choppy. there's no use in complaining, however, and we hop in and swim 400m without any aids, float/tread water for 15min (last 2min with hands out of water), then swim 800m with mask, snorkel and fins. during the snorkel, sea grass churned up by the waves kept getting tangled on my mask and snorkel. when i got out of the water, i found a whole bunch in my swimsuit as well. but, at least that's all over. we still have to do a 100m tired diver tow, but tracy had to run off to meet the ferry, so guess we'll be doing that one later.

and so went my first week of DM training. it's funny how much i feel like i'm back in school - there are assignments to read, a workbook to fill out, lectures, a scary test to anticipate and a swim test. now that most of our silly prerequisites are done, we move into getting to assist on classes and learning subjects like dive physics, physiology, decompression models and equipment. i suppose i'll never stop being a student as i'm actually looking forward to all of this (bring it on!). one awesome thing though is that most of the time our classroom is windowless, by which i mean we're out on the dock or in the ocean.