Jay (38:06.442)
you know, okay, let's design the experiment. And the riskiest assumption was, hey, will doctors with PhDs, right, stick their hands in a device and think that it cleaned their hands? Or is washing the hands too tactile? It's something that we have to feel, right? How will this work? And I remember so clearly, okay, the key here is not whether or not the healthcare providers do that, whether or not, what I was after as an instructor, as an educator was,
Can I get them out of the building to learn, to observe people? Because the action before that was, well, let's go build it. Let's build it, let's spend millions of dollars and implement it. And we actually never got the feedback. We never got evidence that says that this is worth building. This is worth the investment. So let's test it at its easiest form. So they took a cardboard box, they cut some holes in it, painted it up, made it look nice, blah, blah.
Ben Bos (38:40.856)
Hmm.
Jay (39:03.666)
And we said, okay, great. We have this experiment design. Let's get out of the building and see if, you know, the first risky assumption. Will doctors put their hands in this thing or not? I remember so clearly the, the leader of the team as they were going, you know, getting ready to go out of the building is holding this box. She goes, Jeremiah, you know, I go by Jeremiah and in the business world, she was like, are you serious? Like you're going to send us out of this room with this box. So, Hey, I'm not sending you anywhere.
Like, you know, this is your choice. If you don't, you guys don't want to go, that's totally fine. Um, but you know, what's the worst that could happen in your mind? Hopefully you're gonna laugh at us. Oh yeah, maybe. Okay. But how else are we going to learn this? Whether they'll do this? I mean, if we ask them, that's not really seeing what they'll do. It's just, they'll tell us something, but would you believe it? Well, no. So, well, this is kind of the only way to do it then. Right. And I remember just this like.
Ben Bos (39:33.169)
Hmm.
Jay (39:58.742)
look, and this is an adult, you know, who's very successful in her career and her team that she's leading out the door as they left, just like, you know, I cannot believe that you're making us do this, was the feeling, right? And I remember waiting on pins and needles for them to come back, you know, half the day later to see how it went. And I remember just watching them come into the room, all smiles, totally different body demeanor, totally different, you know, action full of, you know,
Ben Bos (40:10.251)
Hmm.
Jay (40:28.014)
conversation about what happened and what it means and all this stuff. And, and they had learned a ton and all of a sudden it was just this wealth of what they didn't expect to happen, what they did. And to me, as an educator, I sat back and said, like, amazing, the, the point is driven here that yeah, with a little cardboard box and some holes in it, we can go out in half a day and learn more than we could have in, you know, months worth of focus groups that you guys wanted to do.
And so I think that's one of the keys in designing the training is to present the opportunities for then the students to experience what you're talking about. Experience the gear, experience the theory, experience, whatever it is, and apply it in a way. And granted that experiment was choppy. It was, you know, they could have probably done it in a thousand different ways. It would have been better, but the point wasn't to have a great experiment and to get great learnings. The point was to teach the team and especially that leader.
to get outside the building to learn. And that's the larger point, right? And I think that's kind of what you're hitting at is how do we get to that point in the design from a philosophical standpoint of the student experiencing it? You can't manufacture current, you can't manufacture, well, I guess you can manufacture gear failures because you've done it to me tons, but you can't do those sorts of things, right? But how do you apply it in the most real setting is a really big challenge from an education.
Ben Bos (41:27.211)
Yeah.
Ben Bos (41:45.165)
a lot here.
Ben Bos (41:51.742)
Yeah, I'm going to make a note of that because I want to get back to that real setting. Because that's a very important point you're making. And I think you said something interesting there. You said the assumption of the result is as expected, right? Okay. You go and do something and you do it because of a need. And when you've done that certain thing, if there's no way of measuring
what the outcome is, like washing your hands, you expect the result as expected. You think, okay, I've washed my hands, my hands are there now for clean. But you don't know. Like you said, you haven't tested it. It might still be germs underneath your nails or you didn't wash your left pinky properly, whatever. There might still be a booger there. Yeah, you never know. So, and I think when we draw a parallel to scuba,
Jay (42:29.716)
Mm-hmm.
Jay (42:40.158)
That damn left pinky.
Ben Bos (42:48.882)
And to the first point I made in the beginnings, like, okay, if people are having a pragmatic point of view to a certain certification level, that's fine. That's measurable. That's doable, right? I can test that. I can put things into play that can actually verify that from, from checking your hands if they're actually dirty still or not, but from a more deeper context than washing your hands within scuba.
It's a tricky part because when you take a class and you mentioned technical training before, when you take that class and you're finished with that class and you got your card and you got the pragmatic part of that card, so now you can go and get your gases filled in the last time, you also assume that you know to dive these dives or do these dives and assume that you can handle the risks that they entail.
But that's a big assumption. And that's much harder to test because, hey, it's a bit more consequence to it than washing your hands. Oh, they're still dirty. Oh, let me wash them again. You know, then doing a dive. Shit, there's a problem. I cannot solve this problem. Oh, I cannot try again. You know, that's the thing in scuba. We rarely get do-overs.
Jay (43:51.351)
Mm-hmm.
Jay (44:07.702)
Yeah.
Ben Bos (44:12.91)
because that's the nature of the elements we're in, right? We're under the mercy of nature and we need to have an exit plan regardless of what the problems are. So this is where when we come back to the early points of getting someone to realize that what they're actually seeking is a safe way to conduct the dives that they're willing to do.
is sometimes a tough sell, is sometimes a hard sell. And I think this is why we as UTD are a little bit of a boutique agency, because it takes a certain amount of diver with a certain amount of willpower to put themselves in a position where they're going to be tested in such a way that is very confronting, you know?
But on the other hand, very, very giving as well. One of the most popular programs we teach is called our essentials programs. Right? I mean, it's the essentials of recreational diving or essentials of technical diving or essentials of CCR or essentials of sidemount. And all these essentials classes are not teaching divers to go deeper. They're not teaching them to dive with different gases. They don't do anything for them from a pragmatic point of view. They only give them.
selfish personal skills. It's a pure skill development class, personal skill development class. And that's always when I teach those classes, I always start off with thanking them for trusting me or trusting us as an agency to take the time to invest in yourself and trusting us to help you develop yourself personally, because they're spending the same amount of money and time that it would.
if they would take a class that does give them new limits, let's call it that, be it depth or time of cast or whatever. So I think that's the great part of ours as an agency. We have such a flat organizational structure that we are so in touch with our instructors that we constantly talk back and forth about how this works and how we can do that.
Jay (46:16.79)
Yeah.
Ben Bos (46:39.406)
we talk about that also a lot in our IDCs, that it's important to bring across that you pay for training and you earn your certification. And it's not that, hey, I want my so-and-so card. Well, what does that mean for you? So first dial down the expectant, the acceptance of...
Jay (46:59.596)
Right.
Ben Bos (47:06.146)
the fact that, okay, you want to learn to dive in a certain area or environment. Let's talk about that. What does that mean? Right? And that's when I liked when you said, let's put things in a real setting. Let's get these people out of this building and let's make them do something physical to test their reactions, not to just have them write down on a piece of paper what they would do or what they would, um,
ideally do? No, let's see if actually what they really want is that black coffee without anything added. Let's see if that's what they're going for. And that's what we're doing with our critical skills. When we develop critical skills training, when I write those things down and when I think about the order of these skills, they're not just a bucket of mayhem.
Jay (47:41.646)
All right.
Ben Bos (48:01.81)
we drag with us as instructors underwater and just dump it over the people and see how they can cope. It's not boot camp in the military. Even they've gone away from that type of training and they had months to build people up afterwards. We usually have a long weekend, that's it. So if there are any instructors out there that still go by that, let's give them stress tests and breakdown dives and all that sort of stuff. I would really urge you to start looking at a bit more of a
Jay (48:03.054)
Hehehe
Jay (48:09.846)
Right.
Jay (48:19.207)
Mm-hmm.
Ben Bos (48:32.27)
proactive and a building block fashion of training these things because
You hear a lot in education that you learn from your mistakes. And I think that's the biggest load of BS there is. No one learns from their mistakes. You make a mistake, I made a mistake. No, no, no. You only learn from your mistakes if you get a chance to do it over and do it in a different way, right? Einstein quoted that it's the definition of stupidity, right? To do the same thing over and over and expect a different outcome.
Jay (48:48.63)
Hmm.
Jay (48:58.498)
Mm-hmm.
Ben Bos (49:09.482)
So, I mean, if you only stop at the saying, hey, you learn from your mistakes, no, you don't. You know, you have to do that over again and test yourself and choose another solve solution and see if that works. And that's what we're doing with these critical skills. Usually, now you've experienced this firsthand. Usually the failures the divers make
Jay (49:09.506)
Yep.
Ben Bos (49:39.618)
are just emphasized by the instructor to drive a point home, right? If someone in the team descends before the rest of the team, the instructor might swim down to that team and say, stay on the surface, and then swim down to that solo diver now on the bottom and say, hey, you're, you know, you have a problem. Solve it, but you're alone. Oh, shit, yeah. And then on the video, we'll see, okay, that's why you don't do that.
Jay (49:44.519)
Right.
Jay (50:01.144)
Yeah.
Ben Bos (50:07.942)
Or if some diver constantly turns around and almost kicks other divers in the face with their mask, we might take a mask of that diver. Now that's not to test the diver how good they are in replacing a mask. No, it's to teach the diver that just kicked the mask off the face of his team to not move in such a way to kick the face of another teammate. And it's these things that we want to build in so that they can come out of the water as a cohesive team.
And not just, you know, three or two or three divers just happen to swim next to each other. And then they stop in the middle of a swimming. And then the instructor swims out in front and says, Hey, you do a valve drill. Great. We swim on and then, Hey, you pretend that your necklace is free flowing. Okay. Great. Continue. And then you pretend that your SPG is bubbling. You know, that's not training. That's just monkey see monkey do. That's just, okay. Do this. Okay. Do this. Okay.
That's personal skills. That's easy stuff, right? What we want is the awareness of the team. It's like I've introduced certain failures that make sense underwater, failures that are so realistic that the divers almost turn into a certain form of role playing, and then they have to establish an exit strategy. And no skill gets stopped in the middle of something, because no.
If you're out of gas, you don't miraculously get your gas back. You have to follow through the consequences, the complete consequences. And not just say, because everyone, like you said, if you would ask those doctors, what would you do in such and such a situation? They would write down the perfect answer. But let's go not ask them, let's go and test it.
Jay (51:43.406)
All right.
Ben Bos (52:04.79)
Let's put it out in front of them and see how they would react. That's the most powerful teaching tool you have to test people in the environment, how to handle certain failures. And, and yeah, we do that with all sorts of development tools, right? Air guns, certain failures we put into place, certain ways of placing divers in, in certain situations to elicit a reaction from the team and
Jay (52:05.326)
Mm-hmm.
Ben Bos (52:34.302)
None of these skills, not one single skill or drill or failure is only to test one diver. It is always, always a team thing. It's always how does the whole team react to this failure? And that's what sometimes drives me up the wall when you hear these training or you hear these near misses or you hear these divers that are planning dives and the whole...
talking about the solo aspect comes into play. And when we dive this in this configuration, it's better off to just be your own self and, you know, oh my God, no, it is not safe. It is not the way to do it. You know, we have done a video on this on our YouTube channel, on the UTD YouTube channel about redundancy. Many people get redundancy wrong. They think redundancy has to do with the fact that you have to solve your own problems. No, no, nothing of the sort.
Jay (53:13.419)
Okay.
Ben Bos (53:31.158)
Redundancy is just to hinder your team less in them helping you solve your problem. Not that you can do it on your own. That's not what we're saying with redundancy, but yeah, that's a talk for another podcast moment. Yeah.
Jay (53:46.222)
That's a whole nother part. Yeah, and I think you hit on an important point in the sense that if you start with that empathy from a design perspective, and you say, OK, well, let me put myself in the student's shoes, and then also at the same time in the instructor's shoes, they can use this. And then you talk about, OK, how do we lay this out from a design standpoint?
Ben Bos (53:56.322)
Hmm.
Jay (54:15.314)
over time. I mean, if you jumped in the water, for example, with some of the critical skills that you're describing, and you just start grabbing mass from an open water student on their second dive, I mean, it's pointless, right? From a design standpoint, you're actually not building that diver up anymore. Now they might go, oh, we're going to make them have a bunch of mistakes so that they have experienced everything they could ever experience under the water in open water dive three. Right?
but you have to think through in the design of it, how do we start with what's the foundation that they need to rely on? So if you come up and for example, steal the diaphragm out of my deco bottle, right? If I don't have the ability in the first place to make a stop to even get to that deco bottle, it's pointless. If I can't hold myself at 20 feet, well, the diaphragm thing's kind of a pointless exercise other than, oh,
Ben Bos (55:02.998)
Hmm.
Jay (55:11.99)
You know, he got surprised. And so I think looking at a design standpoint from, you know, not only the empathy, but then saying, okay, what is the progression of things that need to happen? And how do I lay that out in a way that then they have experiences of that progression? And I think if you look at that from a training philosophy or training design philosophy, you know, the heart of it being empathy,
The next piece being the progression, and the last piece being, okay, here's how we experience or create opportunities for our students and our instructors, by the way, to experience what we're talking about here. That's the magic. When all those things come together in their own way, then there's the magic. I think where it starts to break down is exactly the expectation. Okay, I'm going to a tech one class because I'm gonna learn.
Ben Bos (55:56.27)
Hmm.
Jay (56:10.614)
you know, how to, how to, uh, dive to 150 feet. And I don't have a back kick yet. And the class becomes all about the back kick. And you go, well, that's, that's the progression breaking down. Or if you come to a class and you say, okay, Hey, I want to, you know, learn how to do, you know, team, team ascent, and you describe it and you make them write down all the scenarios and you show them a video of teams ascending. You say,
Ben Bos (56:23.765)
Exactly.
Jay (56:39.082)
You get it and they go, yeah, okay, great. Now you've learned team ascent. That's the experience part of it, breaking down. Right. And then if you, if you go to the back spot of it and you say, okay, Hey, two, in order to take this tech one class, uh, it's going to be, you know, three days in the classroom of me talking and a hundred page or a hundred question quiz, and if you get one wrong, you're out, that's the empathy part. Right. This is impossible. Well, I, I'm not ready for that or one. That's a terrible experience, but two.
Ben Bos (56:43.895)
Hmm.
Ben Bos (56:59.394)
You failed, yeah.
Jay (57:07.126)
You know, that, that empathetic spot, I'm not ready to step into that yet. Um, right. I'm just testing out the water. So I think you have three points of failure that in good design of education, especially for adults, you know, if the empathy is not there, if the progression or the thought through the progression is not there, and then the opportunity to experience that in some way is not there. Either any of those can break down to then not produce the result that was, you know, intended from, from that course. So it's.
Ben Bos (57:28.13)
Hmm.
Jay (57:37.126)
super interesting from a philosophy standpoint.
Ben Bos (57:38.982)
Exactly. And this is also why it's sometimes so hard to really put, to explain to people how long it sometimes takes to write a certain program. Because it's not just as simple as just putting a bunch of facts on some sheets and letting it go out there. They all have to tie in to the philosophy, they all have to tie into the theory to...
from the theory to the personal skills class, and then going on to maybe the next level, or how are they coming into this class, from what background, right? That makes it challenging. So when I set out to design a certain class, like for example, right now, I'm rewriting the new Scooter Cave program.
And it was, you know, some instructors are out there and they're saying, Hey, just put it out, put it out there. You know, we're waiting. Yeah. But, but it's not that simple, right? It sounds like a very simple thing to do, but it's, it's a tricky one to put into play because, Hey, it has to work from all levels, it has to be, okay. Overhead for a simple recently cave two diver, but also
someone who might have a ton of experience cave diving and might even already be on rebreather's with his with his scooter. How do I work this in to the course materials so that we're teaching them both something but not boring one and over-educating the other and leaving the door open for both of them to go the other way. Right. And that's the
Jay (59:21.643)
Right.
Ben Bos (59:28.182)
That's the interesting part. I mean, that's the challenging part from a design point of view. It's like, how do we keep this in such a way that it's timeless but applicable to a multitude of levels? That's the, yeah, interesting stuff.
Jay (59:46.122)
Yeah. I mean, I think, I think, uh, if you're out there listening to this right now and you've taken courses, but maybe you haven't been involved in some way of developing, you know, learning or such, you know, whatever it might be for, for other people, you may not realize just how much thought and energy and intention and debate and so on and trial and error, I would add, go into, you know, designing education. It's, it doesn't stop when, you know, we, we get out of high school.
or college and okay, my education's done. There are constant places where you're being educated, whether it's in my compliance training, which was terrible, lack of empathy, lack of progression and lack of actual application or experience. But, excuse me, but the people that are behind that training in your scuba, and I think, I can tout UTD's horn here.
Ben Bos (01:00:18.262)
Hmm.
Ben Bos (01:00:25.964)
Yeah.
Jay (01:00:44.95)
quite a bit in the sense that I've experienced it as a student to think, okay, what is the customer experience of this? And striking that right balance of those three things and getting it right for me versus my teammate, that's a hard thing. And for me, for the most part, what's interesting is sometimes, you know, in my coaching program, I was always told, okay, go back and do this again. And I go, why? Like I already did that.
And I go do it. I go, Oh, wow. Did I ever actually do this? And that's because I have a new lens. I had new information I didn't have before. And it's, you know, and that's the beauty of the content in some ways is that, Oh, wow. I've seen this five times, but every time I feel like I haven't seen it before because the things that are being referenced or the things that I weren't there before are now there. And so I think it's a, it's a hard, you know, needle to thread and one of the things that I appreciate about
Ben Bos (01:01:34.958)
Hmm.
Jay (01:01:40.494)
appreciate about you, Ben, in that role is that I think there's, you demonstrate constantly a willingness to keep learning and keep pushing it forward. And I'll bring things to you sometimes and say, Hey, this didn't make any sense to me in this course. And you'll say, Oh yeah, that makes sense that we need to evolve it this way forward or, Hey, I saw this in another way that other training agency or another
You know, outside of school or the dance company that you're the troop that you tour with on the, on the, you know, we at winter's right. Um, the, the Dutch Troubadours, um, clog dancers. Uh, yeah, remember that those guys you tour with, you know, when you're not doing scuba, you know, they're teaching it this way, how to move a body. So maybe we can try it this way and set our instructors up. And I think that's important. I think that's maybe the final piece of all this, you know, empathy, progression, experience, and then continual improvement.
Ben Bos (01:02:12.63)
Yeah.
Ben Bos (01:02:15.982)
Yeah, that's him. Oh yeah.
Jay (01:02:35.674)
is probably the last piece is that if it sits the way it sat when you designed it on day one, then it actually hasn't created a room to evolve and grow and get better and better and better over time. That's the other tricky part of the design is how do I create room for it to get better and not stagnate? How do I let it live and grow?
Ben Bos (01:02:55.61)
Exactly. I mean, when, because all, I mean, all I am at the end of the day is an instructor, right? And that's it. Just like you said, I put a lot of experience and seeing how things work and not work puts me in a position to create these courses with a lot of empathy because I've seen it a lot. And that's what I use as a way to give the instructors a shortcut.
quickest way to get the point across, so to speak. But in order for anyone that's teaching anything in a correct way, in a passionate way, in a meaningful way, and in a way where the instructor is present at the time of teaching, you have to be the everlasting student yourself. You have to
person in all walks of life to get the most out of the thing that you put yourself into and to really absorb stuff and be present in what you're doing. Because that way you learn how to get points across. And like I said, I come from a sales background and for me everything is sales. Teaching is sales. I'm selling you knowledge. I'm selling you a way of doing things.
And if you look at it from that point of view, you know, we cannot, we can never have bad students. And, you know, we talked about this when you were helping me out with the IDC last time I was over. And we talked with the IDC candidates about this. It's like, okay, there's no such thing as a bad student. Because if you think about it, this is from a sales point of view and see, okay, the customer is always king, right? Okay, great.
then the student is always king because the student is your customer. The student is buying your knowledge. The student is buying your teachings. And if they're doing something that you didn't expect them to do, it's not their fault. You should have explained it better in a different way. If a student comes up to your class is unprepared, it's not a bad student. It's a bad instructor. You didn't emphasize strongly enough that they should be prepared. Right? So, and if it's still
Ben Bos (01:05:21.054)
If that still doesn't work, if you then send four emails, three letters, send a post of and write a letter to their mom, having them explain that they should be prepared and they still don't come prepared, then it's still your fault. Then you should just make the course so that you don't have to prepare. If it's that hard for the students to prepare, don't make them prepare. Constantly point the finger at yourself. That's the only way you will evolve.
Jay (01:05:30.718)
Hahaha
Jay (01:05:39.981)
Mm-hmm.
Ben Bos (01:05:50.366)
I think that's the only way to truly stay passionate about teaching. You hear so often with instructors in the scuba industry that eventually they only want to teach tech classes. They're done with the open war classes or tri-dives. I don't want to do tri-dives anymore. That's not me. I want to teach tech cave rebreather classes on a scooter. You know, that's, that's what I want to do. No, no, no. That's the diving you want to do. Maybe you shouldn't be an instructor.
Maybe the instructor part is your ego wanting you to be an instructor. Sounds cool. Right. For me personally, the teaching of scuba is a completely different animal than the doing of scuba. I happen to like both. You know, I do a lot of tri-dives, a lot, you know, and refreshers. I mean, I'm going in the water on Sunday with a refresher. I went in the water last.
Jay (01:06:31.387)
Mm-hmm.
Ben Bos (01:06:49.462)
weekend with a girl who just was a very inexperienced, like 12 dive old diver that I've never met before and she wanted an experience dive. So no course, no nothing, just a dive where we just talk about what she's doing, how she's doing it and maybe some pointers here and there, very low key, nothing really structured. And I love that stuff. I love to see the passion of those young developing divers.
Jay (01:07:12.6)
Yeah.
Ben Bos (01:07:17.802)
know where my lead and I will give my five cents on or two cents on that and that has nothing to do with the dive you know that was just purely for me from an empathic fulfillment for me I got joy out of that I mean from that point of view that I could see okay great the things that she gained from that in self-confidence of doing that dive because her parent wanted me to
give her some experience in the diving. I said, okay, great. I can do that by planning the dive, setting up the dive for her, putting her equipment together, make her swim behind me, and we come out of the water together. And every five fin kicks, I'll turn around and look if she's still there, and there'll probably be saucer big eyes looking only at me, and she'll follow me around. Perfect, great. Is that an experience dive? No, that's a survival dive.
You know, it's just following these... You know, put a bell around their neck and walking around like a goat in a field. There's nothing there.
Jay (01:08:18.57)
Right.
Jay (01:08:26.578)
I literally, I literally saw this the other day, which, which from, I won't name names, but from a shop that I know of that, you know, the visibility got so bad in the lake that they had come up with a Home Depot version of basically a carabiner clip on the end of two sides of a bungee to keep the team together. So they literally have a long bungee that they're clipping to each other.
Ben Bos (01:08:44.043)
Hmm.
Ben Bos (01:08:50.668)
Yeah.
Jay (01:08:51.518)
And you go, it's the same thing, right? You know, might as well just clip the bungee on and make sure the, the carabiner clip is still there and follow along, right? I know. I, yeah, I, anyway.
Ben Bos (01:08:57.255)
Oh my goodness.
I've done a whole rant on the buddy line once. And when I sit back in my garden with a glass of wine, it's probably on the YouTube channel, probably maybe on the old now dive YouTube channel from way back when. And I just went off a rant on the buddy line thing that it's just, no one wants to dive on a dive your leash. You know, you're not walking your dog. Come on.
Jay (01:09:16.727)
Ha ha ha.
Jay (01:09:21.074)
Yeah, exactly. Sorry, I interrupted your story. But they've brought that up. Yeah, of course, he could have done that as well. Leasture to you and that would have guaranteed the safety.
Ben Bos (01:09:30.498)
Well, we guaranteed that she would stay with me, you know, and would have given her even less self-confidence. So I approached it from the other way. It's like, Hey, what do you want to do? This is a lake. You've never been here before. I've been here tons. Where do you want to go? I can, I can, I can, I can, how you say, suggest certain areas like there, there's usually pike over there. And lo and behold, we found a big pike, but that's, you know.
Jay (01:09:33.991)
Yeah.
Ben Bos (01:09:56.482)
That's great when something like that happened. I promised her a pike and this huge pike swim by. And I'm like, yes, on her behalf. I can't count, remember how many pikes I've seen in my life, but she was like all over the place. Right. So, and then went to some place where there's these, I don't know what you call them in English, these beautiful leaves that float on the surface. A lotus flower, maybe. You know, they have the still.
Jay (01:10:01.934)
Perfect.
Jay (01:10:22.547)
Okay, yeah, Lotus. Yeah.
Ben Bos (01:10:24.714)
come from the bottom and it goes all the way to the surface and it's this big round lily pad. That's it, lily pads. A beautiful area, lily pads. And if you swim underneath it and the sun is just right, it's fantastic, right? I mean, we're at six feet of water. But beautiful. So I said, go from here to there. And I said, how much do you know about compass navigation? And then she's like every other diver and did no clue about compass navigation in general. Generalizing a little bit, but you know.
Jay (01:10:28.498)
Oh, Lily pad. Yeah, Lily pad. Yeah.
Ben Bos (01:10:54.674)
So made a quick little workshop on the, on the compass heading. And I said, but, but forget the compass a little bit because it's a slopey bottom. So keep the slopey bottom on the left on this way, and then on the right on that way, and we'll shoot end up at the same spot. And I said, I'll just follow you around. You do you, we'll just swim around. And I explained her some hand signals, if she gets confused, whatever. And then we had a great dive and she kind of swam, we swam on par, right? I didn't want to.
In UTD we have a slang thing, which is called a trust me dives. We don't like trust me dives. And if I would have just taken the control 100% dragged her along, even on a body line or something like bullshit like that, it would be a 100% trust me dive. She would have no clue where she was underwater. She would just be breathing underwater and moving forwards. That's it. That's the, that's the con. That's the whole.
you know, amount of education she would have got from that dive. And the whole point of the dive was to give her some experience. Now an experience is something else than routine. If I should just make her swim underwater, she just gets a little bit more routine than swimming underwater. There's no learning. There's no experience to be had there. So we had a great 45 minutes underwater, saw two big pikes, the lily pads, fantastic.
Jay (01:12:21.946)
Yeah. And I mean, I think we'll wrap this one up here with that, that point about trust me dives, the inverse or not necessarily inverse of that, but what you're really saying in a trust me is don't trust yourself. And that's, that's the big difference. And if you're trying to build people up to be competent in whatever, whether it be this 12 dive, you know, you know, lady that you went out with.
Who's just trying to build some confidence in general around diving or the tech three diver learning, you know, how to manage, uh, you know, this crazy gas on the surface versus the, at depth. If you just say, well, do it the way I do it, or, you know, follow me, trust me, and you don't create those opportunities for them to, to experience it, to, to apply it. Then it's also saying at the end of it, when this is all done.
you don't trust yourself. That's the conclusion. You need to come with me if you wanna do these dives again because I'll handle all the stuff that you can't do. And I think that's the wrong approach, right?
Ben Bos (01:13:18.678)
Yeah, exactly. Yep.
Ben Bos (01:13:27.194)
Exactly. 100%. You have to show them the value. And that's another big part of the whole design of this, you know, of designing Scuba or teaching Scuba is to letting them see the value of a certain protocol or a certain skill. Because if the value isn't there, you're not willing to buy it. If you're not buying it, you're not using it. And if you're not using it, you don't know what you're not using.
And then you go down that path of people think they're very safe, but they're unaware of the things they're unaware of. And you go down that path of, Hey, you know, damn, now I'm in a pickle.
Jay (01:14:11.09)
I wish I had, right? That's the name of it. I think one of the documentaries I wish, you know, exactly. Well, great, Ben. This has been awesome. I feel like as always, we could just talk for another three hours on this topic. Maybe we should come back and keep on going because I think it's really interesting. Hopefully for you out there listening to this, it gives you a behind the scenes view of the thought and intention philosophy, all of that goes into.
a course that you might be taking this weekend, or a course you have planned for next month or over the winter, in the sense that I think, you know, I'll always toot the UTD horn in the sense that I think that it's amazing the way that this is designed and the way that it's executed. But I also know there are other agencies who put a lot of emphasis and thought and a lot of instructors that put that same emphasis and thought in the way that they're approaching it.
Give one of those people a high five. And now that you've seen a little bit of behind the scenes, the challenges and approaches to designing scuba training. Um, and if you want to experience, uh, this firsthand, um, come find your UTD instructor, come train with Ben. Ben will be out there. You're, you're coming to Dima right this year.
Ben Bos (01:15:23.39)
Yeah, yeah, I have a whole program. I'm all over the stage basically. East coast, west coast, middle and then back home.
Jay (01:15:30.214)
Oh my goodness. Yes. Yeah. So, um, reach out to Ben, Ben at utdskewadiving.com. Yep. Ben at utdskewadiving.com. Reach out to Ben. Maybe there's an opportunity to meet, meet up with him, um, you know, over the course of the next few months and, uh, and learn from him directly. But, uh, Ben, as always, thank you for, uh, spending the time and, uh, and look forward to our, uh, our third episode together. I think we're going to get into some gear, which will be kind of fun.
Ben Bos (01:15:35.306)
Yeah, exactly.
Ben Bos (01:15:50.038)
Thank you, Jay.
Ben Bos (01:15:55.242)
Yeah, that'll be fun. That'll be fun. Who doesn't love gear? It's Coobergear.
Jay (01:15:59.71)
Of course. I have a fun question to ask you on that one. But we'll get there. Stay tuned out there if you're listening for the next episode with Ben. And if you have not already, make sure that you've subscribed so that you get notified when new episodes drop. And you can also go to thedivetable.com and leave a message, an actual message, like a voicemail on the website if you want to. It's a new feature that came out. And who knows, it might just get played on air at some point. We'd love to hear from you.
Ben Bos (01:16:07.039)
Yeah.
Ben Bos (01:16:28.184)
Perfect.
Jay (01:16:28.71)
And you can always reach me at Jay at thedivetable.com. Thanks for listening. And I hope you come back to listen to the next episode of The Dive Table.
