About the IDC, what can I say? You learn so much about yourself and where you are in the dive world when you go through it – it’s truly amazing. During these two weeks of daily, intensive training, I had the one of the most fun, stressful, crazy, and growing periods of my life. I met a lot of really cool people and got “knowed up” by some very excellent instructors. We endured a lot of struggles, misinterpretations of training standards, and huge learning curves, but in the end you know what they call me? INSTRUCTOR!!
I would like to take a moment to tell you all a little story about our Course Director whom we call Teri “Tea Bag” Leonard. Why, you ask, do we call her that? Well it was a beautiful Maui day, as usual, and we were all practicing our demonstration quality skills in the pool at the Grand Wailea. Professional level training involves a lot of role playing, which is a nice way of saying tormenting our fellow students. During these role playing scenarios, the instructors assign problems to the participants that the instructor candidates must catch and respond to. So, Teri tells me to “tea bag” John and for those of you in my generation, we have a whole different definition of “tea bagging” than what Teri was referring to. It was hilarious; the whole class started laughing – at least those who knew what I was thinking of. By the way, Teri simply meant to dunk him (rescue skill scenario)!
So, the instructor candidate Donnie and his Divemaster came up to the surface (they were under the water so they couldn’t hear what the assigned problem was going to be) and they were just looking around trying to figure out why everyone was laughing. The thing is that they are trying to figure out what was in store for them…if you haven’t had this level of anticipation, it is truly something that should be experienced.
The whole IDC is filled with fun moments like this, the kind of moments that some laugh at and others stress over. If you ever decide to give it a try, I assure you that it is a full circle kind of thing. What I mean by that is that you might be the one stressing one minute, and the next minute you are laughing at someone else who is freaking out. The fun, laughter, stress, anticipation, and growth all make it so worthwhile once you pass the two day Instructor Exam and hear those words, “Congratulations you are a Scuba Instructor.”
