Yay! I’m done! Well kinda… I finished all my internship hours yesterday. These three months in Iceland have really flown by. There were definitely days where I missed America, but there were many more days hat I was really happy to be learning something new and be in a new environment.
For the last week- it’s been a real rush to finish my program. On July 4th- a fellow DMT and I took our final exams. The exam consisted of 120 questions. At lest half of the questions were easy things that were was or watched in the DVD and Divemaster manual. About 20 of the questions- I really just guessed on. I had read the manual but didn’t memorize these little details. The good part is that after the exam we went over each wrong answer, so now I know what I didn’t know.For example, if a diver comes out of the water with bright red lips, what does that? Carbon Monoxide poisoning! ( I didn’t know that prior to the exam, but now I will never forget!)
Over the weekend we did our Divemaster workshops. The discover scuba pool session was pretty fun. Patrik was able to find a real student for us. (Thanks Deb!) We all then watched him conduct a DSD and then did our simulated sessions. This practice made it easy when we went to the open water.
Rescue Diver Workshop
PADI really emphasizes the importance of saving people’s lives. A pre-requisite to the Divemaster Course is to complete the Rescue Diver Certification. Then during the divemaster course, you need to do portions of the rescue diver course again. This workshop is then completed again during the Instructor Development Course (IDC).
This was the MOST difficult task for me. Some of the instructors I worked with talked about how fun this was in Thailand (or some other tropical water paradise). Well, its not all fun when you are in 8°C water with wind and waves splashing on you. All that gear is not fun to take off when you are trying to give CPR and rescue them out of the water.
I was the last student to attempt the rescue but could not finish due to my mental state. My main excuse is that it’s really tiring carrying about +60lbs of gear back and forth and then also picking up another DMTs victims gear and then putting all back together 6+ times, but that’s no reason I shouldn’t have finished. Some days are better than others. I started to get so stressed out that I would fail the entire course because of this one day. I had a flight to catch in a few days. I just couldn’t take it anymore. Everyone came by to cheer me up before we left the dive site. They were really nice and tried to say it was ok. I ate some gummy bears and felt like it was ok and that I could try again in a couple days.
We still had to do the search and recovery scenario, but Patrik nixed it since it had already been a long day.
If I could give a pointer to anyone else doing the Divemaster course, I would force the company to plan out all the workshops ahead of time instead of waiting until the end. I was the first divemaster to arrive, so they wanted to wait for the other DMTs before doing the workshops. That just meant I was under a time crunch compared to everyone else.
I have one more chance to finish before I fly back home on Sunday. Until then I will try to stay healthy and positive. ????????.
The next day was my official last day guiding tours at Silfra. It feels a bit weird being done “working.” I did the usual briefing, helping people into gear, diving, diving and taking photos, and then serving hot chocolate and cookies. It was nice and simple day. Good bye Silfra! I will miss your beautiful scenery.
