Back last semester, one of my diving med school friends and I made a pact to work on and complete our divemaster certifications together. We both love to dive, and we both want to take diving to the next level. She is much more of an extrovert than I am so personality-wise it took me a little bit longer to come to this conclusion, but I am excited never the less!
We picked up our crewpacks last week and I am already through 4 of the 9 chapters in the course book. I still have another 150 pages left to read and A LOT of work ahead of me, but I am making a good start! It's still a bit of a foreign concept to me, but I am trying my best to imitate all of the divemaster "behaviors" that my many mentors have. Perhaps one of these days I won't look quite so clumsy (both symbolically and literally - I seem to be getting clumsier each time I get on that boat rather than the other way around...).
I won't give away any of the juicy details of the course just yet since I haven't really started, but I think you will be highly amused to learn that one of the skills that has to become second nature happens to be the mask clear/removal skill and doing a 400m swim without anything. Yeah...not so sure how that's going to work out. This time around I don't really have a choice, but I failed pretty miserably at working on getting over this phobia back in April and then again in September. Hmm. Step one happens to be remembering to breathe when I touch my mask/starting thinking about putting water on my face. Why can't I just live happily ever after with a nice plate of glass between my eyes and the water?? I don't think my instructor/mentor really realizes how truly deep seeded this fear is. I have chills and an increased respiratory rate just sitting here thinking about it! Oy!
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