Jay (00:01.578)
Welcome to the dive table. I'm Jay Gardner and with me as always is Sarah Miller. Sarah, how are you doing today?
Sarah (00:09.102)
I'm doing fantastic. Daniel, our producer, let me know that I am allowed to have a fan on for these recordings. So I have a little bit of airflow today. It's not gonna be as sweaty of a podcast as last episode. So I'm feeling fabulous. How are you?
Jay (00:18.961)
Ha ha!
Jay (00:29.474)
That's great. I thought it was kind of your trick. You know, put yourself in the pressure cooker and then you produce better content was the trick here. I was like, oh, maybe I should try that out. But no, I'm glad you can have a fan because hyperventilating during a podcast is probably not a good idea.
Sarah (00:47.694)
Well, I just remember, obviously Daniel is much better at producing sound production than I am because I did a video for my YouTube channel once. It was so hot. I was in California and it was so hot. And I was doing a video talking about dry suits, right? And I had a fan on for that. And I got multiple comments about how annoying the fan was. So obviously I just didn't do a good job editing it.
but that's why I've always shut it off since then because I'm like, I don't want the content to sound annoying, you know? Like no one's going to stick around for that. But yeah, anyway, feeling good.
Jay (01:23.135)
Yeah.
Yeah, there's nothing worse than a podcast with bad audio, right? You turn it up in your, in your car and then all of a sudden you have bad audio or pops. So thank you producer Daniel for making us sound good at least. And I'm glad again, you can have a fan because that would not be nice to sit in the hot box to, uh, to do a podcast recording.
Sarah (01:29.742)
Yeah.
Sarah (01:42.51)
Yeah, totally. How are you doing?
Jay (01:46.73)
I'm good. I'm a bit tired and I'm really itching to go diving. It's been a few weeks now, a little longer than that. And it's just been like the stars will have to align during this season because we've had so much rain and King tides and this, that and the other thing. So it's like you have a window and if you're not available during that window, then the window closes and there's another week that passes. And so we were going to go diving last week. And of course we get up in the morning, we're ready to go. And
Sarah (01:54.222)
What?
Sarah (02:02.158)
Right.
Jay (02:16.81)
Start training. So you can't go in the ocean when it's raining or I shouldn't say you can't, you shouldn't go in the ocean when it's raining. Um, in fact, I went and looked up the recommendations. The recommendation was 72 hours after a rain event to get in the water and they were tracking the data from, uh, multiple sources, but around, you know, basically the runoff and things that go into the ocean, which is just gross, but.
Sarah (02:20.11)
What?
Sarah (02:25.486)
I do that all the time.
Sarah (02:32.91)
Hmm.
Sarah (02:46.03)
Yeah.
Jay (02:46.11)
a reality for people getting sick, flu-like symptoms after being in the ocean after a rain. So again, you can push that to 48 hours or whatever you're comfortable with or be in there during the rain. But the recommendation, according to the EPA, was 72 hours after a rain event, then you can get back in the water. So it's interesting, but also just has been killing my diving.
Sarah (03:09.646)
Wow.
Right.
Jay (03:14.046)
I've been in the pool like four times just to get wet and it's ridiculous. There's only so much you can do with a nine-foot pool where you're like, okay, I love being in the water. This is good. I got like an hour in the water, but it's a pool still. There's only so much. I want to go back in the ocean. So I'm itching, I'm dying, all the stress levels go up, everything happens when I don't go diving. So it's time.
Sarah (03:31.502)
Right.
Sarah (03:37.55)
So that has to be, that must be specific to shore diving. You're talking about runoff and getting sick. Yes. Okay, cause I was like, I've definitely, like I've gone diving in the rain so many times, but it's, I just was thinking about it. It's always off of a boat.
Jay (03:44.358)
Yes, likely. Yes, like it's short, I think.
Jay (03:52.266)
Off a boat, yeah, you can go off a boat and that's all good, but shore diving because of the runoff and they talk about, and again, this is a whole, we should do a whole episode on this, but because it was fascinating to me, but the runoff that happens not only from the sewage and things like that, they can get in the water, but pesticides, animal stuff, so on and so forth all can wash in.
Sarah (04:05.23)
Yeah, I would love to do that.
Jay (04:20.458)
And especially when it's a significant rain event, like we're having the last few times it's rained, this is supposed to get a year's worth of rain in three days, which is crazy. So when that happens, things overflow. There's a whole organization that focuses on testing the water after rain events, and also identifying things that are there. They're like shopping carts and all sorts of things wash up on the shore. So yeah, not a good.
Sarah (04:30.894)
I've seen that.
Jay (04:48.306)
idea to go shore diving after it's a big rain event in the ocean.
Sarah (04:52.014)
Well, thank you for sharing that. I'm still such a new shore diving diver that I had never even thought of that, but it absolutely makes sense. I mean, land is disgusting with everything that's going on here. So makes sense.
Jay (05:07.914)
You know, I had this weird epiphany the other day too. So dumb and people are probably going to totally make fun of me about this. But I had this thought, we were driving, it's pouring down rain. I have all the girls with me in the car and it's raining. And we were talking about how the clouds actually suck up the water from the ocean and then bring it over the land and that's what causes the rain. And one of my daughters was like, yeah, that's why it's so salty.
Well, actually, no, it doesn't have salt. Cause remember if we hold salt, will it drop or will it float up? No, it will drop. Yeah. So it can't go up into the clouds. Anyways, this whole conversation was ongoing and it just had a stupid thought where it's like, oh, this is such an equalization. It takes the water from the ocean. It drops it back over the land. Any water that goes back into the ocean, it's kind of a net zero sum, except for the water that, that soaks into the aquifers down below into the land. It was like,
this is wow, nature's such an amazing, you know, equalizer of things. And that was my thought as I'm driving by myself. And of course, I have three young children that I have this thought with. And I almost opened my mouth and started to say, you know, isn't this amazing? How about, and I was like, no, this is no, just hold it to myself. So it's the first time I've mentioned out loud since that conversation in the car.
Sarah (06:26.574)
Well, it's like, you know that, right? But then there's that moment of appreciation, right? I get that all the time when I'm out on the road, like in nature, you just look around and you're like, wow. Like, just, it's sort of an awe moment, you know, and being really present of like, there's magic in this planet, like in this world. It's pretty, it's incredible.
Jay (06:49.634)
Yes, agreed. Well, we have rambled. This is a good opening. Now I wanna do an episode on shore diving, water runoff into the ocean and water qualities and start talking this whole different series for later, but that would be an awesome series.
Sarah (06:54.318)
This is standard.
Sarah (07:02.83)
Let's find a scientist for that, like somebody who like legit knows what's up. We're gonna put it in the list.
Jay (07:07.738)
Exactly. Good call.
Sarah (07:12.686)
All right, so today we're going on to episode two. If you listened to last episode, we discussed our experience and trajectory through the recreational courses. I shared my story, Jay shared his, and so today we're doing episode two of diving into our professional level courses. And I think this is gonna be.
another interesting conversation because we've gone through very different paths. And, um, yeah, I'm, I'm excited to share what I've learned through it. Cause as with my recreational experience, I made a ton of mistakes. So I love, I love sharing these things so that hopefully somebody else doesn't suffer as much as I did.
Jay (08:03.582)
Me too, me too, yes.
Sarah (08:03.95)
So why don't, since I kicked off last one, why don't you start? Because we were blabbing on my story for like half an hour. So let's get you in this.
Jay (08:14.602)
Oh, I loved it though. I love it. Feel free to interrupt at any point with my story and ask me questions or add two cents because it's an interesting one. But yeah, I mean, becoming a pro was, I don't want to say it was a foregone conclusion for me because it wasn't, but I love teaching. It's what I do when I'm not in scuba. It's what I do period, right? That's where I'm at my best. I think we talked about that on one of the episodes of, you know, where I feel like I'm at my best and.
Sarah (08:17.038)
Ha ha ha!
Sarah (08:21.87)
Yeah, let's hear it.
Jay (08:44.406)
So when I'm teaching out of passion and something that I care about, I'm at my best. So, you know, it was not a foregone conclusion, but it was one of those things in the back of my mind, even in my open water class of like, you know, someday this might happen. And of course, you know, at that point in my career, my early diving career, getting yelled at from the course director, all the other fun stuff, you know.
Sarah (09:07.566)
My mind, by the way, my mind is still blown by that story. Like if those of you listening, if you haven't listened to that, go back and check out that episode. Cause that like wild.
Jay (09:11.783)
Oh my goodness.
Jay (09:19.986)
Yeah, yeah. So obviously I didn't come out of my open water class feeling super confident that I could ever even get there. But you saw that I refer to the chart on the wall and I mean it. I literally looked at and studied the chart on the wall. That's not what it looked like to me for the steps. And so...
Sarah (09:37.902)
Yeah, the different levels, right? The paddy steps through the courses.
Jay (09:42.794)
Yeah, and I think all organizations have those, you know, that ladder up to instructor and the first kind of official rung, it feels like, you know, dive master is quite a hefty word, right? You're a dive master and you're responsible for other divers. I mean, it's a big deal. So yeah, so I looked at all that and then luckily for me, my journey through all of that.
Sarah (09:45.902)
Right.
Sarah (09:55.278)
Mm-hmm.
Jay (10:11.838)
Um, did not turn into a zero to hero and that had nothing to do with whether or not I wanted it to, or not. It was really all about the fact that, that for me, as we talked about in the recreational courses, at some point I kind of stopped and realized this wasn't working for me, I wasn't getting better and looked for, for other things, obviously, you know, did the hack it together myself and then eventually found the agency that I now I'm a part of called UTD. And so when I joined UTD.
It really opened up my eyes to the fact that the skills that I was building weren't solid yet. Things, I knew I wasn't there, but now it gave me a measurement and a bar and feedback on the pieces that weren't there. And so I spent about a year in the UTD's coaching program and just working on my own diving.
Jay (11:11.938)
buoyancy and precision control there to, you know, common emergency skills, gas shares, shooting an SMB is not an emergency, but it's a skill. Everything from that to the team diving, team, you know, dive planning, expedition work that I was doing. And, uh, the story of how I entered into leadership there is actually quite interesting because I thought I'd be on that path and I'd let my coach know, yeah, at some point when you think I'm ready,
and I'm going to put that in your hands, not in my hands. When you think that I'm ready to start that education, let me know and let's have that discussion. But I'm not going to push it. I'm not going to set goals towards it. I'm just going to allow somebody else to have that trust of when they think I'm ready to handle that from both a personal skills perspective, critical skills perspective, and knowledge perspective experience. Then yeah, let's go with it. I'm going to trust that. And I had a strong trust with my coach.
And so again, it just seems like scuba happens around Christmas for me, but one Christmas, um, you know, my, my wife says, Oh, there's one more present for you. I'm like, Oh, but it's over here on the phone. Like, okay. And so she pops open the phone and there's a video from the CEO of UTD saying, Hey, Jay, um, you know, you put in a ton of hard work and la really, really nice video that says, Hey, and we'd like to welcome you into.
the UTD leadership program. Congratulations, you made it to the leadership program and we start next week or whatever it is. I was blown away. I was like, oh, okay. Cause it wasn't something I was necessarily working towards. It was something I said, when it comes, it will come. And the story behind that again, my wife is incredible is that she had called him and said, hey, I want to give Jay diving for Christmas. And she had looked up some diving sites that were, what you could find on the internet.
Sarah (12:40.686)
That's so cute!
Jay (13:06.162)
And he graciously steered her away from some of those things and said, you know, maybe a better spend a better way to do this is he's, I think he's ready for the leadership program. Why don't we give that to him as a, as a Christmas gift for his diving. And she said, yeah. So they did the whole video and you know, it's been amazing. So that's how I entered leadership.
Sarah (13:24.974)
Oh my gosh, your wife is just, I cannot wait to meet her. What a gem.
Jay (13:30.822)
Oh yeah, she's awesome. She's awesome. Yeah. We, we try to, you know, we realized in our relationship, not to get into a relationship, but I think one of the things that makes our bond work and has made it work for gosh, how many years now? Been together 15 years, something like that is I knew for me, I wanted to be with her regardless of whether whatever format that was, let's put it that way, whether I was her friend, whether I was a acquaintance, whatever, I just wanted to be around her.
Sarah (13:46.254)
Beautiful.
Jay (14:00.274)
and support her in some way. And I think she felt the same way about me. And so we're very different people and we're very different interests. And how do I know what she wants to order on a menu? It's exactly what I wouldn't order. So it's clear, like, oh, what does she want? Whatever sounds gross to me is like, yeah, that's what she's gonna order. And probably the opposite is true for her. So we're very different from that perspective, very different in our interests and things. But I want to support her. That's my goal in our...
marriage and in our relationship. And she has done the same for me. And it's been awesome in that, in that sense that we're able to have things like this happen. So you're not a model relationship by any chance, by any stretch of the imagination, but I've been very lucky in that, uh, my spouse is supportive of my diving, um, but never will be a diver. And in some ways that's a bummer. In other ways, great. Um, it makes family vacations really tough. I'll tell you that with young kids right now, but other than that, it's great.
Sarah (14:37.998)
Love it.
Sarah (14:44.654)
Hell yeah.
Sarah (14:55.214)
Yeah.
Jay (14:58.222)
Uh, and sometimes, you know, when she says, Hey, maybe you should go diving gently. I know I'm like a stress ball reading the red waiting to explore like why, how I am right now. It's like, Oh, that gentle nudge. Hey, you should go diving is like, Hey, you're a stress ball that needs to like, go do your own thing. So go be on your own path for a minute. Exactly. Go underwater where we cannot see you, hear you be contacted from you for a little bit and then come back.
Sarah (15:15.022)
It's that, you're driving me crazy. Go away for a little while.
Jay (15:27.554)
Cause it's true. Every time I come back from diving, it's like, uh, everything. And I don't know what that is. I don't know if it's just, you know, the weightlessness and my, you know, neuro pathways are being rewired for that moment. I don't know, but when I get out of the water, diving has that effect, the dopamine if it's whatever it is. Right. Um, so anyway, back to professional side note on my wife, I'll have to send my wife this, this part, I don't think she listens to the podcast. She's like, ah, it's all about diving.
Sarah (15:43.662)
super mean hits. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Yes.
Jay (15:57.654)
listen to you talk, listen to you talk all the time. So that's how I got into leadership. And one of the things with the program that I chose to be a part of UTD is the standards for personal skills are very high. And actually it's a double edged sword in some ways. To meet those standards, you need to really be in control, period, right?
And there's not a lot of tolerance. So say what you will about artificial numbers or whether it's important or not to, you know, your everyday diving. And that's the debate. But when it comes to the standards for showing others how to dive, I think the standard should be high. And so for us, it was, you know, holding buoyancy or position, not just buoyancy. So forward, backward, up, down, position within a few inches.
And that's measured, right? It's not, it's not just, you know, Oh yeah, it looks kind of good. It's measured. It's being in control of, of your students in, in a live setting. We don't do follow me dives, meaning, Hey, I'm swimming ahead and everyone does what I'm going to do. No, we need to let the students dive and be able to see three or four steps ahead of them and, and be in control of that situation. It was about, you know, learning how to balance.
Sarah (16:59.182)
Mm-hmm.
Jay (17:22.986)
what you correct underwater, what you correct on the surface, and what you correct in video review. And learning how to do a video review, a meaningful video review that causes correlation to real diving, not just, oh, your fitting technique is a little off here. Well, who cares? What does that matter to a real dive? What's the effect of that? How do you play that out? How do you have a story to tell about that? And then there was, I mean, just a depth of dive theory.
and things that we went through, everything from gas density, bubble sizes, standard gap, I mean, depth, depth of dive theory that we had to go through. And so I started my education in that way and worked really, really hard on it because from the academic standpoint, I got it, fast learner in that sense. But
I remember in one of the first, it's a long story we can come back to later, but one of the first real situations where I was being evaluated, I remember getting under the water and we had, it was this thing called a skills camp. We had all these students in a pool. It was unclear who was supposed to do what from a professional standpoint, all of a sudden I was looked at as the one that needs to do something. The story was, I'll just tell it because it's funny. There's an instructor who's an OG instructor within UTD and actually is
their podcast is awesome if you ever listen to it called the great dive podcast, but a guy named James Mott and James and I have become friends since then, but I started out not liking him very much. I'm sure he didn't think very highly of me at first because we're at the skills camp and you know, the funny little side story. Now you can look back and laugh, but it was unclear, right? I was not an instructor. I was not a dive master. I was an IDC candidate. And so I was there in my mind to be a tank monkey.
Sarah (19:15.95)
Mm.
Jay (19:19.03)
Right? I'll carry tanks. I'll do whatever you need. The instructors are the instructors. Uh, let them do it. And I'll be there to observe. And when an instructor tells me to do something, to demonstrate a skill or to whatever it would be, then I'll do it. That was my mindset. Well, we, you know, get in the water progressively. And, uh, you know, people were working on personal skills, working on breathing for buoyancy eventually leads to them actually gearing up and practicing those skills. And you look in the pool and it's just a,
Sarah (19:19.47)
Right.
Jay (19:47.354)
circus. I mean, it's just a circus. People moving this way, that way down the swim lanes, there's no structure to anything. Well, and I'm, you know, at some point someone comes up to me, Oh, you know, I want to try different fins. I have my fins off. I have, you know, my mass to somebody else, whatever. These things are all out and about. I'm just standing there in the middle of the pool, observing all the chaos going, gosh, this looks like chaos. And James came up to me and says, Hey, you know, nudges me to say, this is quite a clown show. And I looked at him and said, yeah.
It's a clown show. And my thought was like, what are you going to do about it instructor? And that was the end of that interaction. And then like five minutes later, he goes, Hey, Jay, this is quite a clown show. And I'm like, yeah. He goes, what are you going to do about it? And I was like, me? Like, what do you want me to do about it? And I'm like, Oh, I'm supposed to do something here. So I literally had my gear floating on the, like, you know, it was like flip on my gear, like.
Sarah (20:36.046)
Hahaha
Jay (20:46.666)
My long hose is trapped behind my back. Like just look a mess. Don't have fins on nothing and like dive under the water and try to like gain some control of the situation, bring people up to the surface and get them all organized on stuff. And of course, you know, my evaluation, like his gear is not even set up correctly. La la la. Like what a, what a ass hat clown of a, of an IDC candidate we have here. And I was, you know, at the time, um, I was really pissed about it.
Sarah (20:50.542)
Thanks for watching!
Jay (21:15.286)
Right. Because it was like, look, this was unclear and you're not setting me up to succeed. You're setting me up to fail. And I don't think it was intentional. Now that we've talked about on James's part, he wasn't clear and he's thinking, Hey, these IDC candidates need to show, you know, be in control. And I'm thinking, Hey, these instructors need to be in control and big miss. And that whole skills camp was just a really big struggle. The students had a great time, delivered a ton of value to them. It was a really cool event, pioneering event in scuba.
Sarah (21:20.462)
Hmm.
Sarah (21:33.454)
Mm-hmm.
Jay (21:45.622)
But for me, from a professional standpoint, it was a train wreck and it was demoralizing. And it was all the things that you'd feel of that you failed, I felt I failed. And yet I didn't even know what the standard was to fail too. But I know I failed, right? So where did I fail? It wasn't like I didn't nail a skill and man, if I could only got that right, it was the whole thing I screwed up somehow and I didn't even know how. And so that really shook me.
and really caused a moment of, do I really want this? Do I really wanna do this or not? Because I could go to another agency and be an instructor next week. Is this really worth it? Why would I put myself through this? And it was a big question. And to UTD's credit, and now I'm co-owner of the company, so.
Sarah (22:29.838)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Jay (22:40.494)
Before then I was not, I was simply a student, an IDC candidate, all that stuff. You know, I, I communicated how I felt and I was there with a cohort of other IDC candidates and I remember commiserating with them at the end of it because we, we failed, all of us. We didn't know how, but I remember one of the guys who's now become one of my really good friends, he's like, um, I just need a moment. And he saw, uh, I don't know, a donut store, yum donuts, whatever it was. He's like, I'm going in there.
I was like, okay. It goes, and he bought like a dozen donuts. And I remember just sitting by the pool of this hotel, eating donuts. Like we were like something like, you know, I don't know. We had failed miserably. It's so sad. Yeah. Just like pounding donuts by the side of this pool and talking about, you know, how, you know, crappy of an experience all this was anyway, it's quite funny.
Sarah (23:09.998)
Thanks for watching!
Sarah (23:22.254)
emotional therapy donuts.
Jay (23:37.842)
But we communicated and I communicated that back to UTD. And to UTD's credit, they said, and I think there's a whole episode a while ago on this, they said, yeah, we F'd up. Yeah, we made a mistake. We tried to do something that had never been done before in a different structure and we failed you guys. The other stuff went well, but you as what we intended, we failed you and sorry, and now my job is to make it better. And I had to make the decision.
Sarah (23:56.206)
Hmm.
Sarah (24:05.294)
Mm-hmm.
Jay (24:07.106)
Do I trust that? Do I want this? Do I not? Or do I punt and move on? And it was a really tough decision at the time. So obviously.
Sarah (24:17.486)
What made you decide to stay? Because that obviously, you had a lot of back and forth. So what was the deciding point?
Jay (24:28.118)
You know, I think there are two things. I think one is chalk it up to my personality, chalk it up to whatever you want to chalk it up to, but, um, but I, I want, I wanted the challenge and I wanted that, you know, to be in the best in my eyes at the time, to be a part of the best, and I didn't want to reduce my standards.
for the sake of making it easier. I wanted to keep my standards and I believed that this was the best agency for me in that way, which is ego, right? Which is all sorts of things, but it's also my personality. Like if I'm gonna do it, I'm all in. And I wanted to be all in it. So I didn't wanna walk away and do something that was easier because this was hard. I wanted to go through it and endure.
Sarah (24:58.958)
Hmm.
Sarah (25:15.31)
Mm-hmm.
Jay (25:24.79)
because I know on the back end of all that, I'll appreciate it much more than if I just putt now. And then I think the second reason was I truly believed and still do in what UTD stood for, right? And what UTD was doing and UTD is kind of a black flag, a Jolly Roger in the scuba industry, you know, of DIR diving and, you know, and it's pioneered a bunch of stuff that nobody knows UTD pioneered. And...
and has done it just because they needed to, not because it was something cool to do. And so that spirit of entrepreneurship, that spirit of kind of the Jolly Roger is something I'm just aligned with in general. And so it made sense for me to stay and to continue along that path. So we could do a whole episode on that whole why UTD for me. But again, I don't think it matters the agency.
Sarah (26:08.142)
Hmm.
Jay (26:23.214)
Now, this could have been a story with GUE, could have been a story with Patti or Nally or any of the agencies. I think the lesson for me was, hey, becoming an instructor is hard and there are ups and downs. And you have to really look yourself in the mirror because you're not doing it for the fame and glory and money that awaits, right? You're doing it because it's a passion of yours. And for me, I had that moment. I had that, you know, face the dragon and the hero's journey moment.
Sarah (26:48.27)
Hmm.
Jay (26:53.014)
uh, where it was, do I want this and can I endure and, and do I think I have what I need to actually come back home, which is the end of, of the hero's journey. Um, after facing the dragon and, and be better for it, be a better human being for it, be a better diver for it, be a better instructor for it. And the answer to those questions was, was yes. So I stayed, um, and looking back again, I'm very glad I did.
Sarah (27:22.542)
Mm-hmm.
Jay (27:22.914)
So that was kind of my journey, ups and downs, all kinds of things. And, and, you know, I became a dive master at first and coach, um, was teaching a bunch of students around that. And then from there, uh, I'll never forget, you know, I was in Florida doing a tech one training and, um, the training director for UTD his name is Ben Boss and James were there as our instructors and, uh, at the end of the course, they were.
you know, we all went out to dinner like we did every night and we were chatting and whatever it would be. And it wasn't a particularly great diving day, you know, it's tech, tech's hard. We'll talk about that next one. And a tech's dependent upon your team members. So you could have a great day, but the team had a terrible day. And so we went through that experience and feeling down. And I remember the train director at dinner saying, "'Hey, why aren't you teaching more open water classes?' I was like, Ben, dude, like, you know why I'm not teaching class, I can't.
Sarah (28:00.398)
Mm-hmm.
Jay (28:20.95)
He's like, well, you should be teaching more open water class. I'm like, dude, I can't, I'm a dive master. I can take certified divers in the water and that's as far as I can go. And he's like, no, you really should be teaching more. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, God, like, you know, okay, yes, you're right. I will, as soon as I'm an instructor. He's like, no, you dunce, you're not getting it. Why don't you, when you go home, teach your first open water class?
Oh, wait, that would mean I need to be an instructor. Yes, because, so what are you, are you, he's like, yes. Yes, congratulations, you have passed. You're officially signed off. I had my first sign off before, Ben was my second sign off at the end of that course. Totally not something that I saw coming, but they had been working in the background to evaluate me during the course.
Sarah (29:08.43)
Oh.
Jay (29:18.838)
And so yeah, I became a UTD instructor in the Florida Keys at a little restaurant and with a manatee swimming below us and went home after that trip as a full, full card carrying UTD foundational instructor and haven't looked back since.
Sarah (29:27.118)
Cute.
Sarah (29:35.374)
Interesting. So in UTD, you don't have like, outside people come in and check you, like test you.
Jay (29:46.526)
So it's an evaluation sign-off basically. There needs to be an initial sign-off from whoever your IT is. So in my case, my IT was Jeff Secondorth, the CEO of the company. And they need to see you in lots of scenarios. So I did a lot of different types of diving, a lot of different scenarios with students, a lot of different.
Sarah (29:52.718)
Mm.
Sarah (29:59.438)
Mm-hmm.
Jay (30:15.446)
you know, things that I had to be involved in on top of the academics and the lectures and everything else, my personal skills, a lot of critical skills with students. And then we asked that there's a second sign off from another IT to fully sign off on that person becoming an instructor. And that I think is designed to ensure that the quality of what we do is maintained.
And so you have different eyes on it. So in my case, I actually had three ITs working around me, which were James and Ben and Jeff. And they were having conversations about where my growth path was and where I needed to focus and so on and so forth. And like I said, I got my second sign off there in Florida without pursuing it, right? It wasn't something that I was there for, but it's something that came out of it.
Sarah (31:05.006)
Yeah. Can I, I'm having a total squirrel moment of like you said something and it's, I've heard you talk about UTD and there are a lot of, at least what I'm perceiving as men's names. Are there women? Like I just haven't heard or seen a lot of women in UTD.
Jay (31:11.48)
Yeah.
Jay (31:22.882)
Sure.
Jay (31:32.866)
That's a great question. So the short answer is yes, absolutely. And they are awesome. One of them, her name is Kim, lives up the road here. And she is an amazing diver and did this whole presentation on diving in Antarctica and all the things that they went through with that, fascinating stuff. And she does a lot of work with, I think, net, ghost net removal. That's her main job.
Sarah (31:40.238)
Okay.
Sarah (31:52.91)
That was sick.
Sarah (32:00.526)
Mmm.
Jay (32:02.274)
But she's no longer instructing. She's still an instructor, but she decided to stop teaching courses. Um, and there are a lot of other women, uh, Tanya Cook that's out in the, the Maryland area who runs the shop there. It's her shop. She owns the shop there as a UT instructor. UTD is also very small. So we, we probably are representative of the industry in terms of male, female split, but at a very small level.
Sarah (32:21.742)
Yeah.
Sarah (32:31.246)
Yeah.
Jay (32:31.302)
in the sense that I can name them by names in some ways. We have an incredible batch of instructors in Europe and in Asia as well that I haven't had a chance to meet one-on-one. But yeah, it's a good question. I think likely we're representative of the industry at large.
Sarah (32:53.806)
So like kind of a, what is it right now? Like a 60-40 sort of split. Somewhere around there.
Jay (32:59.346)
somewhere around there would be where I think we'd be, maybe a little bit less, maybe it's like a 65, 35 split type thing. And that's a shame. That's something that I think should change. And I don't think UTD by any means is purposely that way, nor do I think it has a male machismo feeling to it, or any of those things. I wouldn't have joined the company if that was the case.
Sarah (33:19.726)
Right.
Sarah (33:28.238)
Right.
Jay (33:29.862)
But I do think that it's something that we and the industry on the whole has to look at and has to, we have to say, you know, be honest about it. And I would love more women. I think women instructors are incredible. And I've been around so many amazing female divers. Yeah. And I've had lots of female divers as students and as coaching clients.
Sarah (33:37.326)
Yeah.
Jay (33:54.862)
And it's interesting because there is a network of, I remember the first question I got where I was like, I don't know the answer to that, was like putting on a dry suit neck seal with long hair. I was like, honestly, I've never even thought of that. And I'm sorry that I never thought of it, but I just, not something I've experienced, but let me call Kim and put you and Kim in contact. And you can ask her any of those sorts of questions because I don't have the answer. Rather than me say, let me call Kim.
Sarah (34:05.934)
Hmm.
Sarah (34:14.286)
Hehehe
Jay (34:24.546)
Like, no, you guys, and hey, if you want to go work with Kim, great. Right. Um, so there's a lot of those, I think, um, balancing things that I think a lot of instructors, and this is maybe an off the beaten pathway of my journey. Uh, and now we've talked about my journey for half an hour, but I think
Sarah (34:43.181)
No, it's all good. It's all good. No, I was just curious. We don't need to go into, I just, the little bit that I've heard of UTD is only from you, to be completely honest. And I just, well, and I met the team at Dima, and it was a bunch of dudes, you know?
Jay (35:00.014)
That's a bunch of guys. Yeah, there. Yeah. You didn't meet Tanya at Dima? I don't know if I remember introducing you to her. Anyways. Yeah. Look, look, I, my goal with UTD is, is to grow it and the, the right people for us are, has nothing to do with gender or race or anything like that. It's all mindset. So the people that are attracted to UTD are, and where UTD serves, I think divers best.
Sarah (35:03.278)
No.
No, no.
Sarah (35:23.086)
Yeah, yeah, of course.
Jay (35:30.226)
is if you are committed to being, to getting better, and you have that little drive in you like I had that you wanna be the best. I mean, I'll just say it, that you wanna at least have your ego stroked in that way. You think, you know, if that's important to you, then UTD is great, right? It's going to hold you to those standards. It's going to push you. It's gonna challenge you. It's gonna, all those things. And so...
Jay (36:01.259)
And to be a little bit avant-garde, a little bit willing to try new things, a little bit willing to deal with maybe the unpaved paths that come up in a journey like I was on or others go on. I think that's who we serve well.
Sarah (36:05.774)
Mm-hmm.
Sarah (36:16.398)
Yeah, what, so since becoming an instructor, have you done further instructor training, you know, kind of like in the PADI system, it would be, you know, teaching specialties and becoming, you know, an MSDT master instructor, IDC staff, that kind of stuff. Have you pursued any of that?
Jay (36:36.946)
Yeah, so with UT, it's a little bit different in the sense that when you become a foundational instructor, you're signed off on a set of courses that you can teach. And that has to do with your proficiency with those things. Not, you know, it's not kind of the, I think there's traditional standards say something along the lines of like a teach one level below where you're certified outside of technical. So there's a separation between foundational instructor.
just kind of the recreational courses, technical instructor and IT are kind of the three buckets that our instructors fall into. Within the foundational instructor, you are able to teach courses one level below where you are currently certified based on proficiency. So for example, I've taught a bunch of sidemount, taught a bunch of backmount, you know, mini, like we call them minis, not specialties, but.
Sarah (37:13.006)
Mm-hmm.
Sarah (37:31.406)
Right.
Jay (37:32.33)
Um, you know, back-mount stuff, uh, you know, SMB stuff, a bunch of essentials, those sorts of things I have not taught technical. That's what I'm working towards. And within our standards, it's two years from when you're a foundational to whether you, where you can qualify as a technical instructor to even try for that. And for me, I've done a lot of, um, what you would call, um, uh,
Sarah (37:51.31)
Mm-hmm.
Jay (38:00.342)
And so I've gone on to courses and technical courses and things, and basically been an observer and swimming air or swimming gas, right? If, if needed, but trying to get, and I think the big thing for me in all of this, in all of this, and this was the realization that maybe is helpful for those that are listening to our journeys out there, you know, for me as a, as a instructor, a trainer, coach, all those things that you can in my non scuba life.
I can walk into a room of a team working. Within a few minutes, I know what's happening. I can understand the dynamics. I can read what's happening with, with the room. I can read the leaders. I can read these things. And it's just a matter of, I have a lot of experience doing that. And it traces all the way back to, you know, I grew up in a very angry household where the response to mistakes was anger. So I had to learn how to read a room. I had to learn how to read the mood. I didn't know that's what I was doing, but that's what I was doing.
Sarah (38:50.062)
Hmm. Yeah.
Sarah (38:57.838)
Mm-hmm.
Jay (38:58.286)
And so it's a muscle I built for years. I can see the game so clearly up here on the surface with whatever it is, with other human beings. What's interesting is I saw once I got under the water with experienced instructors, how they saw the game and I wasn't there yet. I couldn't get under water and see three steps in front of the students yet. I couldn't get under water and come up to the surface and tell you here's the next three things that's gonna happen.
Sarah (39:17.87)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Jay (39:28.202)
I just didn't see the game yet. And it had to do a lot with not enough experience of seeing the game. So I spent a long time just observing, not teaching, just observing, trying to see the game, trying to say in my head, play it out three steps ahead and see what happened. I mean, I volunteered as a dive master for all sorts of things that was just like, get in the water and be an extra set of eyes.
and my, you know, for free and carry our tanks and do this and that and everything, just so I could get in the water and see the game. And that's where my work was, right? And that's what I did. And I did it consistently. And I tried to just understand so that when I get under the water now, and I have students in front of me, I'm three steps, five steps, however many steps in front of them, because that's where my brain needs to be. And I'll give a quick example. It's kind of a funny example from a recent course, but.
Sarah (40:23.502)
Okay.
Jay (40:24.194)
You know, we were working through an essentials course, which is essentially, an essentials course is essentially, repeat that sentence. It is kind of the foundation of personal skills that you need to build. And a lot of people come into essentials, you know, as pretty experienced divers, you know, a couple hundred dives underneath their belt, lots of different C cards. And they go, I just, I know I have all these qualifications, but I know I'm not where I want to be. And there's a gap. And I'm gonna...
Sarah (40:51.918)
Hmm.
Jay (40:53.742)
take a chance that maybe you can fix this gap. And Essentials is incredible at that. That's what it does. And so anyway, as with these students, we were working through shooting an SMB, which an SMB in and of itself, you know, has a procedure to it, so on and so forth. But really what it's testing at that point is positioning. Your buoyancy skills, your positioning, your fitting technique. Can you hold position while task loaded? That's what it's really testing.
Sarah (41:21.934)
Mm-hmm.
Jay (41:22.818)
It's not testing the procedure, the protocol of shooting an SMB. As an instructor for me, I don't care so much that you get every step right in the protocol. I care more that you understand the context in which we use the protocol and that you can do it under control. So if you unbungee the SMB before you do, clip off, those things can be fixed with procedures. I'm looking at, are you in control?
Do you understand why we're shooting it now? All of those sorts of things. So of course, your first time being asked to be neutrally buoyant, hold position, why you go through this procedure, most students, it's a struggle. It's a lot of task loading to think of all these steps and do this thing and to do it neutrally buoyant and all that stuff. So these particular students, you know, it's coming. So watching and seeing the game, they start to work on the bag.
Sarah (42:06.222)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jay (42:20.566)
The other students, while that person's shooting the bag, should be there. We also talk about an SMB as a team drill. It's a team activity, it's not an individual activity. So where should you be? You are now the point of reference for your teammate while they're task loaded. So hold your buoyancy, hold your position, be supportive of the teammate while they're task loaded. So of course the other one can't hold position, so he's swimming this way and the other one's swimming that way. It's just kind of, you know, swirling around. And
Sarah (42:37.966)
Mm-hmm.
Jay (42:49.238)
which is to be expected. If you come and take an essentials course and this is your experience, that's probably 95% of the people's experience in the first drill here. We work from there. So I already saw this is what's happening. What work through everybody shoot their SMB. And I knew these guys have no idea where they are. We're in 20 feet of water on the shore and they have no clue where we are, right? There's no way. So now what can I do to drive that point home?
Sarah (42:56.654)
Mm-hmm.
Jay (43:18.71)
Well, if it wasn't Essentials, I would inflict some sort of an incident. I'd give somebody an out of gas and they need to establish an exit and get out of there. In Essentials, we don't do those critical skills, right? As a team, right? That's step too far for Essentials. So instead I said, well, what can I do? This is all under the water, seeing the game, knowing where their brains are at, knowing all that stuff. I just said, hey, stop for a second, look at me. Hey, question, where's the exit?
How do we get out of here? Open water, ocean, the shores only goes one direction. Not a complicated navigational decision. Said, hey, where's the exit? And they're looking at me like, well, you should know. And I'm like, I don't know, you tell me. And so they look at each other. One looks at his compass, right? They're all kind of sitting there. And then all of a sudden it's like, one guy gives a signal, it's that way. And the other two are like, yeah, of course it's that way. Okay, yeah, that guy must know what he's talking about. Let's go.
Sarah (44:02.414)
Yeah.
Sarah (44:16.622)
Oh no.
Jay (44:16.662)
So all I did was watch them swim off, hold my compass up, shoot it in the video, shoot them swimming off. Now, in California, the exit's east, right? It will always be east, because that's the direction of the land. And here these guys are swimming south, and off they go south, right? So I just got it on camera. I gave them a few minutes to see if they'd catch themselves. Someone would say, oh, nope, it's actually the other way.
Sarah (44:32.494)
Hehehehehe
Jay (44:46.55)
kept swimming. So I caught up to him, stopped them said, Hey, now I'm the captain. We're going up. And I said, got up to the surface and I was hard on him. So this is how divers die. You got task loaded. Yeah, happens in a dive. Then you get presented with a question. And you use group think you just relied on your first trust me dive. The first guy to say it was that way. No one confirmed.
Sarah (44:56.718)
Yeah.
