Almost An Instructor

So I should be an instructor by now.  The Instructor’s Exam was just under two weeks ago. What happened?! I didn’t pass all of it. I failed a section. It was challenging. I will try again.

Taking the Instructor’s Exam

The PADI instructor’s exam, or IE, for short, takes place over 2 days. On Monday night, we all – all the candidates – gathered together and met the examiner and received our assignments. The IE is divided into multiple sections:

1. Open Water/Rescue Exercise 7 – Demonstration of our ability to teach and evaluate students’ skills in the open water/ Demonstration of our ability to teach how to rescue an unresponsive diver at the surface
2. Written examinations in 6 subjects – multiple choice questions on subjects including physics, physiology, equipment and more…
3. Confined Water/Skills Demonstration – Show we can teach and evaluate students’ skills in confined water (swimming pool)/Demonstrate 5 different skills at Instructor Level quality
4. Classroom presentation – Presentation on a knowledge review question and answer, 5-7 minutes in a classroom

The above is listed in chronologic order – we did the first one on Tuesday morning, #2 on Tuesday afternoon, then Wednesday morning for numbers 3 and 4.

Failing The Exam

I failed Rescue Exercise #7. On Tuesday morning. And continued to take the remainder of the exam knowing I wasn’t passing the exam to become an instructor. Because that is what I was supposed to do. You see, if I passed the remainder of the sections, I would only have to retake the portion I failed. If I quit, or failed something else, I would have to redo the entire thing again. It was difficult because I was upset, but I am not a quitter. I passed everything else.

What Next

So, after weeks of classes, I need more work. In two weeks, I will be retaking section 1 of the exam. And I really want to pass it. More than anything. I am trying to find people to practice exercise 7 with me, because it’s not something I can practice alone. I have 2 weeks and will practice whenever I can find a partner.

Failing

I haven’t blogged since the IE because I’ve been disappointed in myself, upset, embarrassed, and worried that I’d disappointed my teachers and my loved ones. I went through a lot of emotions! Once I got through that (mostly),  I just wanted to pick up the pieces and move on from it. But I can’t stop blogging, or living my life, because of one small failure. It’s how we learn the most – from failure, from mistakes. And one of the things that keeps me going in this life is learning. So, I am going to continue to fail if I want to keep learning. This is the life I’ve chosen for myself. I want to learn and grow and improve.  Once I do pass this exam, it will help me as an instructor, because not all my students will learn everything easily and I will absolutely 100% be able to relate to them!

Keep Going, Almost An Instructor

I love diving. I am working on my skills everyday, both as a diver and as a teacher. While I wait to retake the exam, I am going to be assisting on courses and learning from the great instructors at UDC. I am also diving and working on my skills. Last week, I took a bunch of courses so that I will eventually be able to teach some specialty courses like Deep and Nitrox once I am a certified instructor.

Here’s a video from a dive a couple weeks ago with some of my classmates. I was very excited when we saw this eagle ray. I love rays.

I’ll try to post more often now that I’ve finally revealed my embarrassing secret to you all. I’ll be over here in Utila for a few more weeks, learning.