A Note to the Newbies

I got certified in January of 2012, which really was not that long ago. I find it amazing how little detail I remember from my basic class. I remember my first time breathing under water and how weird and cool it felt. I remember feeling like I was flying along the bottom of the pool.  I remember getting in the ocean for the first time and how excited I was to see pink anemones. I do not remember the struggles of putting together my scuba gear for the first time or pulling on that thick wetsuit. I do not remember the amount stress that comes with practicing rescuing a skin diver or scuba diver off the bottom for the first time. I do not remember the balancing act of trying to figure out how to control my buoyancy.

These past couple of weeks I have been a teaching assistant for my first basic scuba class. The students just finished their two weekends of pool sessions and now they are headed to the ocean. I feel I can say they all had a lot of fun in the pool and definitely enjoyed themselves, but I have seen a fair amount of frustration too. Scuba diving is not easy, and all of the things those of us who have dive experience take for granted are hard to learn. It is inevitable that you will set up your tank only to find that the BC is on backwards and your regulator is facing the wrong way. It is inevitable that you will forget to count or do your rescue breaths in the anxiety of rescuing a scuba diver for the first time. It is inevitable that you will land hard on the bottom of the pool when you are learning to descend. All of these things improve with practice and none of us did everything right the first time either. 

So, basic students, these are my words of encouragement. You will get it. Before you know it you will not have to struggle setting up that tank; it will just be habit. You will be running through the steps of the rescue counting and breathing in sync. You will be descending with ease and coming to a gentle stop. Scuba diving is an amazingly fun sport and with these skills you will have the opportunity to experience incredible things. Pretty soon scuba diving will be about those once-in-a-lifetime experiences, not about the steps to getting there. I can honestly say, after a little over two years of diving, I cannot remember the frustrations of my basic class. I can remember the excitement of being introduced to a world that has allowed me to be engulfed by a school of fish, shake hands with an octopus, swim through a shipwreck, be within ten feet of a six-foot swell shark, ride currents over brilliant coral reefs, swim through rock formations out into a great expanse of blue ocean, lay on the bottom of the Pacific watching the sun shine through the kelp as it moves with the gentle waves, and meet numerous interesting, adventurous, and bodacious people who share my passion. It won’t be long and I promise you will feel the same way.