Dealing with Impatience

[PlatypusMan]

During the course of a wonderful day at Clear Springs SCUBA Park today,I fell into a conversation with some other folks I've known when the subject of impatience -- particularly in SCUBA -- came up.

The type of thing I'm talking about is when someone feels that they should be moving on in their training faster than they actually are. There are a variety of reasons why this might be happening -- from an inability to immediately Master skills properly(such as, say, mask clearing) to the desire to get into higher levels of training in a very brief period of time.

Have you ever experienced impatience with your SCUBA training? If you have, what made you realize it? How did you deal with it?

What do you perceive as the dangers of an impatient attitude?

[crpntr133]

If anything I have probably been just the opposite. But I have seen those that it is a race to see how many cards they can get in a year. Yes this actually happened. Those are the ones that we normally read about in the newspaper.

[Zenagirl]

I think we've all seen and heard of the "zero to hero" types who go from OW to instructor in a year (or less!). Danger of moving too fast is not spending enough time diving and learning from experience.

I definitely don't feel I suffer from impatience. I did AOW a year after OW, Rescue a year later, and now am working on MSD, which I'll get a little over a year after Rescue. I did do my DEMP and participate in DES Quest this year though...

[deepdiver47]

Yes I have experienced this issue and it was with my then 12 year old son. Just couldn't wait, didn't see the value in it. "Just give me the card and we will go diving dad, what the problem" that is what I heard. We had a great 2 week classroom and 4 OW dive sessions. It was nice and in depth for this engineer.

I think that people such as my son, left unchecked will just be a menace to others that they dive with (best case). Worst case, they can get real hurt.

[Kingpatzer]

We live in an instant gratification society. Putting in work to master something is simply not a common personality trait.

I teach guitar, and about half of my students each year say something along the lines of "oh, I don't want to learn how to read music, I just want to be able to play a cool solo . . . "

And, as in any market driven economy, there are always companies willing to sell to a need. So because folks want to be "divemasters" after a couple of weekends, the training requirements keep shrinking to meet that market demand.

[wxboy911]

As soon as I completed OW my 7 year old son started asking what course I would take next. After I shared the list with him his response was "OK, lets get started!" I am the kind of person that enjoys the trip as well as the rewards at then end while one of the people I took OW constantly reminds people how many dives he has in and how many more he needs to take AOW. To each their own-others may have more cards than me but I will do my best to have the most fun.

[Krakenn]

Verc

Kraks

[PlatypusMan]

Originally Posted by Zenagirl

I definitely don't feel I suffer from impatience. I did AOW a year after OW, Rescue a year later...

I must definitely be a slacker then -- I did AOW 24 years after OW.

Probably had something to do with the underwater hose cutting specialty... the one they kept practicing on me all the time...

[PlatypusMan]

Originally Posted by Krakenn

Verc

Kraks

Xoxacataptl.

Plat

[CrzyJay456]

Originally Posted by wxboy911

As soon as I completed OW my 7 year old son started asking what course I would take next. After I shared the list with him his response was "OK, lets get started!" I am the kind of person that enjoys the trip as well as the rewards at then end while one of the people I took OW constantly reminds people how many dives he has in and how many more he needs to take AOW. To each their own-others may have more cards than me but I will do my best to have the most fun.

thats a big thing. having fun instead of just be in, run around till you drain your tank, surface, and do it again... just for the #'s....
people seem to want to log 3000 dives a week even if they are not fun.
me personally, im into having fun, and relaxing, thats why i dive.
i have never wanted to make the #'s instead of having fun, and the only reason i would consider AOW soon is because gorilla wont stop talking about how awesome the spiegel grove is and that everyone talks about it all the time (he is still OW and has not dove spiegel grove either.)