Almost there!

I can’t believe it really is day 6 already, and tomorrow is the last day of the IDC!

Today it’s another pool day. The plan was to go into the pool first thing in the morning again, but there was a slight problem; the Spanish group had the same plan… And the pool just wasn’t big enough for all the holidaymakers plus all the IDCcandidates.

And so it happened we changed our plans; the Spanish group would go in first, whilst we did our briefings for our confined water skills for the afternoon, and later our knowledge development presentations. We sat outside on the picnic table with the sun on our heads, and presented our briefings to the group and to Tim and David.

Compared to the beginning of this week, I was hardly nervous at all for my briefings. After that, it was time for our Knowledge Development presentations. My third and last presentation went really well, and turned out to be another 5.0.

We also listened to the “adventures in diving” presentation, had our lunch break, and got ourselves ready for the pool. We got into the water and just like last time, we started with the surface skills. My skills were “remove and replace scuba unit underwater” and “distressed diver underwater”. The first one went really well, I spotted the given problem and solved it in a correct way.

The second skill was a bit more difficult, as it was part of the rescue course, so I haven’t done this skill very often.

I demonstrated the skill, and then got my students to do it. It all started wrong and confusing, as my students switched their roles around because of a misunderstanding or perhaps they had been too nervous to listen to my briefing this morning. I panicked a bit, and stopped them immediately. Then, nervously, I got them to do it again, ready for the next problem. Every time there was a problem, and I corrected it. By the fourth time, the course director stopped us, and from the faces of my fellow candidates, I could see that I had done something wrong.

Back in the classroom, it turned out that I had scored a 5.0 for the first skill, and I had missed the given problem on the second skill. Despite the fact that I had corrected all the other problems, missing a problem always means a score of 1.0. That means that I have joined the “famous one club”. They say that every good instructor will get a 1 for something on the IDC/I.E.. Let’s hope it brings me luck for the future.

After warming up from the cold water again, we listened to one more presentation: “rescue diver”.

And so we suddenly realize that tomorrow will be the last day of our IDC course! We all got used to being here very quickly, and now it is almost over. Plus… the I.E. (instructor examination) will start in three days!!!

We only have a little bit of homework for  tomorrow, which is preparing our briefings for the second half of the open water exercises. I will spend the rest of my time reviewing my theory for the I.E.

Love, Alice