A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.
-- Thomas Carruthers
I have always enjoyed studying. But I have never thought that one day I would actually enjoy teaching. It was an amazingly rewarding experience to teach diving! I doubt there are words to correctly express this amalgamation of excitement, fear, adventure, responsibility, freedom, conscientiousness, joy and pride that you experience in the teaching process. I am so happy that I got to live through this! And I'm so grateful to my lucky stars that my first students turned out to be good! And I mean, very good, they are simply natural divers.
A month ago, Dima announced that he was bringing his co-workers to get certified and dive in Cozumel. It was immediately decided that I would be teaching them, now that I'd gotten my dive instructor status. That day I got nervous about having my first class. And I remained nervous until March 25th when the guys finally arrived and… all of a sudden my nervousness completely vanished. How does it work exactly? One moment you are imagining all the worst things possible to happen, and the next – you are absolutely confident that everything will be just fine. I will never understand the mechanism of pulling yourself together under pressure, I guess, but I'd noticed a long time ago that I am very good at it. I remember my very first Fund Filing training (J) at Strategic Insight: with my luck, I had to present the product in front of 40 people at Federated in Pittsburg (yes, it was my first business trip in the US, too). It was almost 13 years ago, my second month at this new job, and I only had a very vague idea of what a mutual fund was and what exactly Fund Filing as a product had to offer. I don't think I slept one minute. "I will surely screw it up," – I thought, "there's just no way I'll be able to even understand any questions coming from the clients. Why would Hanna do this to me? Doesn't he realize that it's too soon, that I have no idea what the product really is???" And then, finally, the morning of the presentation arrived. With my hands trembling I opened the door to a huge auditorium where they had prepared a stage, a projector and a microphone for me. I don't know how I made it up the steps to the stage – everything was kind of blurry and spinning a bit. But one glance at the people in that room, their faces full of curiosity and desire to learn the tricks of the trade, completely calmed me down. And the couple of hours I spent there conducting the training, answering the many questions and making jokes flew by without a trace of nervousness. And I have a thousand other examples of this strange transformation, so eventually I just stopped worrying about this type of thing completely. I just have no "audience fear".
I guess, because the instructorship experience is something new, my subconscious decided it was a good time to let me experience this worry again – after all, I haven't really felt it in a long while. "I will screw it up, - I thought. – It's way too early for me to teach. What if they are terrible and I won't be able to catch their 'fatal' mistakes? What if they are prone to decompression? What if I fail to properly demonstrate the skill? What if I get lost on our open water dives?" Endless irrational questioning bothered me for a month. But the second we stepped into the water near Casa del Mar, I stopped being insecure about my being a novice instructor; as if by magic I was suddenly a knowledgeable and experienced teacher. I knew how to answer all their questions, I knew how to correct their problems, I knew how to make things look super easy. I just knew.
And on top of everything, thank God, the guys were amazing. Totally natural divers! I had absolutely no issues with them – perfect buoyancy, great trim, low air consumption. And they were excited and eager to learn, too! And smart. And attentive. For example, they made only 1 (!!!) mistake on the theory exam. Seriously!? In short (although I guess it's already too late for thatJ), my first instructorship experience was very encouraging, to say the least.
On Friday we spent hours in the ocean, going through all the skills in the confined water first. And Saturday I had my very first guiding experience (while conducting the class for them, too!). Again, I was nervous the night before – desperately trying to memorize the reef maps for the sites we were likely to go to – but the second we dropped in the water at Colombia (naturally, not one of the sites on my list to study), I just knew what to do. And even the fact that I had to struggle not to let them drop all the way down to the reef (because Open Water classes 3 and 4 should be conducted at the depth of no more than 60 feet) didn't unnerve me at all. I will never stop being amazed with human psyche. We can be the whiniest insecure nags on Earth, but when the situation really calls for it we are somehow able to pull ourselves together, and that's the way it is. We are – by nature – survivors. Disclosure: I realize that I sound a bit too dramatic comparing the life's general survival instinct to a simple teaching experience, but I cannot help it – I guess, I'm still high on the adrenalin and whatever else is released into your brain and body as a result of overwhelming excitement.
And to conclude this ode to teaching, I must share this unparalleled feeling of being proud of my students when I followed them around during the hunting trip on Sunday, admiring their absolutely incredible buoyancy that was not even a little bit disturbed by the new heavy ammunition – Aristeo's spear-guns. What a reward!
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