or: Transferable Skills to an Alternate Career

This time tomorrow, I will be flying.

To another tropical island.

Of course diving is involved.

And this time, a little less luggage than what I have been traveling with lately.

My place is finally more organized so it is easier for me to pack. I’ve been able to make piles of things I want to take with me so I can then narrow these down further. Since I’m going to a warmer climate, I will only be taking the jumper that I’ll be wearing on the plane. HK is chilly right now otherwise I may have missed taking one at all.

Rather than clothes, my suitcase will be filled with diving gear and study materials.

My fins will take up the most space (my yellow ones since my pink ones are having their own holiday in Mauritius), followed by my wetsuit and mask in its case. My pink fins are keeping my BCD (buoyancy control device / jacket / whatever else you want to call what we wear to attach the tank to that we can inflate and deflate until we’re neutrally buoyant in the water and then use our breath to control the depth) company there too so the biggest items will be on  one side of my bag with my bikinis, wetshirts, board shorts and some study materials.

My toiletries will also go on this side since it can be sealed in case something leaks. I don’t have much that can leak now that I’m using bars for shampoo, conditioner and face wash which is exactly why it is best to be prepared for something to leak! Murphy and his Law does explain quite a bit.

This leaves the other side of my case for normal clothes and I don’t think I’ll need too much of those. During the day I’ll be in a classroom for about half the time, followed by the pool and / or ocean. I don’t think there’ll be much night activity for me because I am there to learn and it will be pretty intense.

I am training to be a PADI Instructor which will mean that I will then be able to teach and certify divers for their Open Water, Advanced Open Water, Divemaster and various other courses. This is beyond what I am able to do at the  moment which is leading dives and helping with the Discover Scuba Divers to take their first breaths underwater. It is doing this which has helped me to decide to become an Instructor.

The reactions of these first-timers, particularly those that have never seen ocean before, is very rewarding and I want to be able to give them an even better experience and to be able to teach those that want to go further with their diving. The more people that learn to dive, or at the least, see what it’s like underwater, the more people will take better care of the environment too.

It’s also just pretty amazing what you can see down there! Being weightless and not hearing any voices is great too. Quite meditative and peaceful. And then there are the fish…. I like showing people the fish in particular and talking about them afterwards.

I’m digressing…. it’s the fish….

The course itself is roughly two weeks and involves quite a bit of theory (physiology, physics, equipment, decompression, dive tables, how to teach, the PADI standards and practices etc) plus a practical aspect of teaching ih the pool and ocean and being able to pick-up and correct students’ mistakes so they passs their exams and become good divers too.

After the course, there is a two day exam where they bring in someone from the PADI head office to assess us.

It is possible to fail.

I don’t want to just pass though, I want to be good at all of these things since these are some of the things that will make me a good instructor.

I’m even a diving nerd.

I’ve been studying some of the materials and writing notes and I am going a bit early for the course so I can practice some of the practical aspects like taking my mask off underwater and blowing through a free flowing regulator – these are two of my least favorite skills and since the regulator I’ll be using isn’t my own, it’s good to get familiar with the equipment first.

After I do all of this, I’ll be then staying there to study a bit more so I’ll be able to teach some speciality courses too like deep diving, wreck diving and night diving. I’d like to see if I can do fish identification too…

I am diversifying my career opportunities with this. It does use quite a lot of my skills from Human Resources including the teaching aspect. I even get to sell – in diving it’s equipment and other courses that people are usually interested in, in HR it’s policies and procedures that people typically are not interested in.

I’m nervous about all of this and excited at the same time!

I’m going to channel this all into excitement though and then relax, study hard, practice and become an Instructor!

* Thanks to The White Stripes for the title to this post. This song was number 1, twenty years ago this year!