The Good, The Bad, The Resolution; A Path to Becoming a Scuba Diving Instructor with Kevin "Heat" Wood | S2E16

Jay (00:01.449) Welcome to the dive table. I'm Jay Gardner and back with me for our second episode is what is your official title in the military? Like are you a what's your lieutenant or sergeant or

Kevin (00:13.718) Uh, no, it's a, it's major Kevin heat would be 52 instructor pilots. So yes, call sign is heat H E A T bring the heat.

Jay (00:19.009) There we go. Heat, major heat. I like it, major heat is with us. Oh, major Kevin Wood. No, Kevin Wood, my good buddy, who if you didn't get a chance to listen to the last episode that we recorded that came out last week, I'll go back and listen to it. We talk all about the parallels between flying and flying a B-52 and scuba diving. And it was super interesting to get into that. So thanks for coming back.

For the second episode, glad to have you. How are you doing today?

Kevin (00:49.95) I'm good. Thanks, Jay. It's, it's always a good time to chat with you. And, uh, I'm glad that, uh, the, the talk and the communication is a lot better than texting you on your phones, cause normally I'll text you and it's about three days later, I get a response, at least here, it's a little, it's a little bit quicker here.

Jay (01:02.041) Oh, I know. I'm so terrible. I have literally, it's been on my life improvement lists forever is the communication thing, but I'm so bad about like, if it's not immediately pressing to deal with, then I push it off. It's like everything because it's, I have to deal with this other thing, or I have to deal with this thing. And then it's like, I get back to it. So again, I'm.

Kevin (01:23.439) If that's the case, I'm going to start every text message with help Jay. I've been a car accident and then hopefully you'll respond back and then.

Jay (01:27.397) Yes, see, then you would get an immediate response and then, you know, we'd read the story of the boy that cried wolf together at some point and we'd learn a valuable fable at that point.

Kevin (01:39.821) As long as there's enough pictures in that book, we'll be good.

Jay (01:42.901) Exactly. As long as the wolf flies at some point or someone flies, you'll be happy or goes under the water. Well, good. So for this episode, we were talking about what we wanted to do. And, and one of the unique things about our relationship is that, uh, we went through our IDC together, which is instructor development course through an organization called UTD or unified team diving. So you and I went through that. It was a, we talked about exactly what it was, but it was a

different approach. We were kind of either you could look at it as guinea pigs or pioneers, whichever way you want to float that. You know, it depended on the day, I think how we felt. But we went through that new model of how instructors are developed and eventually certified to become SCUB instructors together. That's how we met. And I, you know, we were talking about how it'd be fun to talk about that journey. So we're going to structure this episode in three parts. The first part is the good.

You know, why did we become instructors? What was good about that journey? How's it going? Uh, the second part is the bad and we're not going to pull any punches. There were some things that were not good about that journey and that, um, you know, are still frustrations or whatever. And then the last part, instead of the ugly, cause that's self-evident. I think if you're watching the video, uh, we'll talk about the resolve, how, how it's resolved, how it's going, what our plans are for, uh, the future in terms of being instructor. So you ready to jump into this instructor?

development centered podcast. Yeah. So what one requirement though, you do have to have at least one or two good things. No, you wreck the brain.

Kevin (03:10.71) Sounds good, man. Let's do it.

Kevin (03:19.754) So it's what it's funny you say that because do you remember when we're sitting in that Irish pub It's like 9 o'clock at night and Jay Jeff's like Kevin you have to say something nice about this person's video and I turned to Jeff and go I'm on Central Time I haven't had a monster in 24 hours and I'm dead tired and James goes well, we're done here I just get something why you guys alright, we're done

Jay (03:41.27) Yep.

Jay (03:45.173) Have a good evening, see you Kevin. Yeah, exactly, yeah. So hopefully you're well caffeinated, you're still in your own time zone, it's not too late, we'll have some with you today. All right, let's do this. All right, so to set things up, let's talk a little bit about the context here so that everybody out there understands kind of what we're doing. So we entered a program through an organization called Unified Team Diving. The history there is it's kind of a, not kind of, it's a technically focused agency that grew out of

Kevin (03:48.362) Alright. Yes.

It'll be good.

Jay (04:14.885) If you're familiar with that. And the standards are, I would say, not relatively extremely high to becoming a scuba instructor. They're doable, yes, but they are comparatively to other organizations, I would say, or what else is out there in the market. It's a very difficult, quote unquote, program. It's one of the hardest to put yourself in. So a certain type of person decides that that's the right way to go.

Kevin (04:24.67) But they are doable.

Jay (04:43.789) that this was at least my understanding of it. I'm not trying to tout you and I's horn, I'm just kind of setting it up. And we entered at a time where, you know, it was right after COVID, there were a lot of things that had moved to the virtual world, and there was, we were kind of the first class of a new way of doing this IDC, which was dealing with a lot of the academics, even some of the skill-based, you know, personal skill-based requirements and things like that.

dealing with that through a coaching program. So it was online, you know, content and video back and forth. And, you know, we had a weekly, we decided to do a weekly call with all the instructors together that were going through this, instructor candidates, sorry, that were going through this to kind of, you know, iron sharpen iron, you know, share what we were going through, all that stuff, which is how you and I, which is kind of the complaints session as well. And so that was the context which all culminated where it was supposed to culminate.

Kevin (05:32.179) Oh, it was a Bitches Gryphes Complaint Session.

Jay (05:42.529) in kind of a hybrid skills camp slash instructor development, um, sign off. Well, we did our Dan training together through that, you know, this big week in San Diego when I was still living in Texas, and that was supposed to kind of be the end of the journey. And then, you know, we, we were newly christened UTD instructors was how it was supposed to go. Not exactly. Yeah. And that's not exactly how it went, but, uh, but that's to set the context of what.

Kevin (06:03.95) Yep, spoiler alert, nope.

Jay (06:11.593) Um, for everyone out there, what we were, what we were doing. So structuring this in, in those three parts, let's start with the good, the good of maybe why you want to become an instructor, how it went, so on and so forth.

Kevin (06:23.158) Well, okay, let me just touch on, there may be some listeners who don't know how to become an instructor in Scuba in general. Now I will all preferences, I did not go through Patty IDC. I went all the way through Dive Master and then was basically about to pull the trigger on Patty IDC way back in. And I asked a bunch of questions to get ready.

And apparently, and once again, I could be wrong, so no absolutes or anything, but Patty does theirs around a two week, where the first week is you're a dive master doing dive master presentation skills. So all the 26 skills that you have to do, you're doing them in a pool and you're working on how well you can demo them. And then the following week is an IE exam where the examiner comes out, plays the student, and you basically demo those drills to your fellow classmates who are acting as instructors or students.

And then you get Kristin, hey, you're an instructor. Ours, like Jay was saying, was much more drawn out in terms of multiple weeks. We had multiple homework assignments. We had video debriefs, or not only video debriefs, we had to debrief each other that we were in the pool. But also we had to do mock lectures on buoyancy, waiting, basic six, setting up an SMB. So a lot of that stuff was done virtually.

And then, yeah, we come out to the skills camp, which was basically like free help. It was basically, Hey man, I need you, I need you to pay your way out here and pay for a class that you're then going to teach. And oh, by the way, your, uh, your goodie bag is we'll see you in six months. Yay. All right. So back to the good. So why did I want to become an instructor? Uh, from our previous podcast, I was already a flight instructor for the United States air force had a lot of joys and flying around, seeing, uh, people.

Jay (07:51.569) Turned out to be.

Jay (08:01.239) Yeah.

Kevin (08:14.142) Go from barely being able to you know tie their own shoes and chew bubblegum to flying five feet from another aircraft in the weather pretty cool stuff And I was thinking man. I really love diving. This is awesome I want to get my friends and family involved, but I don't want them to go down the same route of You know sitting on the ground overweighted, you know Scared shitless at times because the training didn't match the real-world environments and having them struggle through the years that I did

that and to get chicks, right? Anyways, it's a running joke right now. Anyways, I was already married at the time. So with that being said, I figured, hey, something that I had learned and kept true with my aviation background is to be an instructor, you're gonna teach a student, but you learned so much more from the interactions with the student. And you have to know it 10 times better than the student. You have to have multiple ways to teach it. So...

Jay (08:46.921) Hahaha

Kevin (09:12.514) by being an instructor and being a good instructor and teaching a student, you will become an even better diver because everything that you're teaching them, you have multiple ways of doing it and you're more adapt to the nuances of it. And that's basically why. It's a little self-serving. It's like, I wanna help you, but I wanna make myself even better. So, cool.

Jay (09:33.78) Right. And why UTD? Why did you end up choosing UTD?

Kevin (09:37.71) Okay, so I basically, and this goes back to like, if we want to talk about near misses and stuff, I did Patty, did all the Patty stuff, went out to Guam, did Patty Tech 40, Tech 50, you know, down to 165 feet, multiple deco bottles, cool, had a great time. Still didn't know what I didn't know. Came back and I was looking around and yeah, I wanted, I knew Trimix was important. I knew...

Putting helium in was good because I went to 180 feet on air, got knocked out of my mind. The instructor was on a Trimix rebreather, so he basically pulled my ass up from the bottom of Guam. So had fun, you know, looked at my fingers and they were all talking to me at the same time. So I wanted Trimix. So I, local instructor is a Helatrox instructor and hadn't been in the water in two or three years. Long story short.

We skipped over a bunch of stuff that I thought was important in retrospect. We go to dive the O. Everything is good until we hit the deco line. And because of a few overlooked issues, I ended up running out of O2 on the deco line with about three minutes of deco left. Now, of course, built in, I went back to back gas, went to my instructor cause he was on a, on a breather. Got his O2 bottle finished up to deco and was fine. More of a bruised ego.

type of thing, but still near miss. And I've showed Jay that logbook page once or twice, and it is filled with things that thou shall never do again. So I was a little like, there's gotta be a better way. Started looking around and I think, well, okay, GUE, these guys, 800 pound gorilla, you go on every scuba board forum and it's the cult-like following, but you know, it's working. I mean, they did the WKP project, right? Yeah, Woodville Curse Pulling Spotter.

Jay (11:10.197) Ha ha ha.

Kevin (11:29.014) and doing amazing dives and stuff like that. I'm like, all right, cool. Well, shit, none of those guys are around. And then I'm like, well, what's this UTD thing? And they're like, hey, we're kind of like that. We're from that, but we have online coaching. So we can do a lot of it virtually. And as long as you have a pool, you can get better. And then, yeah, you're gonna have to come out here. But I'm like, all right, that makes sense. I'm busy life. I'm, you know, at the time still active duty deploying and that kind of stuff. So let's fit in. I call up Jeff or I call.

to say, Hey, I want to sign up. And Jeff picks up the phone. So talk to talk about like, Hey, welcome to your organization. It's not a secretary. It's not some like low level man. It's the CEO of the company come to find out it's him and Ben run the company and soon to be you. So it's like, Hmm, but I thought it was pretty cool at the time. I'm talking to the CEO of a dive organization and he wants me to be an instructor. Cool. So I took a bunch of photos. He goes, Oh, you need to come out to San Diego, jump on a red eye flight, go out to San Diego.

Jay (12:07.467) Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kevin (12:24.662) He puts me up in his house, very nice of him and his wife, very great accommodating, great people, puts me in the water and we do ESM and blows my mind. I'm just like, wait a second, you're telling me bathing suits and a suspended seven foot hose and this is all diving is? And he's like, yep. And that blew my mind. Went back, started filming myself in the water doing similar drills, felt my abilities exponentially go up.

And then I was honored when he was like, Hey, the progress that you made over these last few months is pretty, pretty good. We'd like you come on leadership program and that kind of stuff. And at that point I was like, all right, let's go down this route. Like here's an agency that has some really good fundamental backgrounds. It has a rebreather program. It has a cave program. It has a rec program. All these guys are coming from loads of experience diving all over the world. Um, yeah, let's do it. And at that point it was just choose your own adventure. And it was like, well.

We'll see where this goes.

Jay (13:22.009) Yeah, that's good. Yeah, so for me the reason I wanted to become an instructor, you know, it's pretty simple. You know, for me I'm a passionate about teaching and passionate about teaching adults new ways of approaching something. So that's always been my little side of things is I really enjoy kind of that black flag of like you've always done something this way but have you considered doing it this way?

And, and then those light bulbs going off. And I've always loved that. And whether it be, you know, in the other things that I've taught and my, my day job, quote unquote, of really running and building innovation programs, running with startups. Um, I've loved that. And so when I fell in love with scuba, it was kind of a well-duh that I would want to someday become an instructor, but certainly was not like those kind of goal. One after open water was like someday I'll get there.

I know that's in the back of my mind when I'm ready when I'm deemed ready to do that from someone that I respect. And

Kevin (14:23.671) I think that mentality is huge because be careful of the people who on day one want to be instructors. It's like, you've never done this, you have zero experience, are you doing it for the patch?

Jay (14:29.941) Yeah.

Jay (14:36.233) Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I think to be honest, you see, I've talked about in past episodes that the chart on the wall and you go, oh, well, the top of the chart is instructor. And of course, you know, but I think for me, I knew enough at that point that becoming an instructor wasn't a like, how fast do I get there? It was a, when I'm deemed ready by someone else that I respect, then I'll be, when I get invited to be an instructor. That was kind of my...

in my head, wasn't going to be public with my goal is this. It was when I get invited, then I'll go. And so, yeah, so that, and ultimately for me, it was about, you know, so much of, um, the love that I had for Scuba and, and for what that opened up for me in terms of just even out of my open water class, the joy I got out of that activity and the environment was, wow, if you can be a part of spreading that joy.

to other people amazing. Like how much, I had no idea that you make no money, I had no idea that all these things that came with it, it was just F, you could be a part of spreading that joy. Amazing. And so that was kind of a motivating factor.

Kevin (15:37.891) Hahaha.

Kevin (15:45.835) Was that before or after you got yelled at by the dive instructor for losing your buddy?

Jay (15:49.249) Oh geez, that was, luckily it was after, no, it was the course director of, of the open water. Yeah. That I got, yeah. It reamed on my, my third open water dive ever. Yeah. During class. Anyway, this is another story for another time, but, but yeah. And so for me, I chose UTD because similar to you, I guess in some ways that I found UTD out of a desire to be better as a diver myself. And so that's what I was focused on.

Kevin (15:53.759) Okay.

Jay (16:17.561) and came to it by, you know, wow, these guys have a lot of experience and knowledge. Just listen to, you know, I have to listen to parts of the podcast like five times just to understand what they were really saying. And then even then I didn't really fully understand it until maybe even today. Right. And so I wanted to learn, you know.

Kevin (16:36.99) Those podcasts are chucked full of experience. It's basically 93% experience and then 7% of Jeff ranting about how he doesn't like Matrox.

Jay (16:45.797) Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, I mean, I wanted to get a part of, be a part of that, be trained and get better. And so I became a coaching student, not on the leadership path. And through that process, um, you know, eventually Jeff asked me to become part of the leadership team, the leadership program, um, or a leadership program, not a leadership team. And, uh, and so, yeah, so that was my invitation and it's, and so happened that it was probably around the same time that we were.

Uh, that was happening, converging, and we got put into the same cohort of, uh, of, of instructor candidates to try out this new model. Um, so I, I'll have my, my first good thing about the new model and about my experiences, and I think it mirrors what you were saying a minute ago is I think through my instructor development course, I became a better diver. It wasn't the intention to become a better diver because the intention was to learn how to teach diving, but I know through.

you know, all the video work and all the really detailed ways of like teaching proper weighting, for example, you know, I mean, down to how you phrase a certain thing is really important that I got a better comprehensive, not only of the academics, but I became a better and safer and more team oriented diver through the process of my IDC, my experience there. And I think that hopefully for those that are thinking about going through an IDC or those that are

you know, maybe have been through it, that hopefully that experience happens for you or that you put that into the calculus that yeah, even though that's not the intent, one of the outcomes is that am I going to become better as a diver through this process or not? And I would say for sure in my experience, I became a much better, much more confident diver through my IDC or leadership track within UTD.

Kevin (18:37.91) I think the unlike the so there's comparisons and then contrasting differences. I think that one of the differences between other organizations in the legacy is that if your IDC is two weeks, there's no way in those two weeks that you're going to improve your skills. You need to come to the IDC already a good diver. Now there's going to be tips and tricks, but how I looked at it was all the months leading up to our IDC or the skills camp was focused on

primarily getting you to be a good diver. Why? Because you need to demo really good demonstrations. You need to be a role model for your students. The IDC and some of the lectures and stuff that we had to do was preparing you to be a good teacher or a good instructor. So I think a lot of people think, well, I'm just gonna go to the IDC and then come out a good instructor. Well, what is a good instructor? Is that someone who's a good diver? Is that someone who's a good communicator? Is that someone who's super knowledgeable?

Jay (19:21.409) Mm-hmm.

Kevin (19:35.338) Well, all these things, you're not going to absorb it in two weeks. Like it doesn't happen where you're kneeling on the bottom, kicking up stuff. You don't know your stuff. And then instantly after two weeks, presto, you're, you're perfect. And I think the, the model with UT is that one, they're not going to ask you unless you're on the path to mastery for your own personal skills. Once they see that you're on that, you're not perfect. Like neither am I still.

Jay (19:39.659) Mm-hmm.

Kevin (20:04.682) Videotape myself yesterday in the pool and I'm like that needs to be different But the mentality is that I can look at myself on my own video and go I need to improve there Whereas other people just go hey, it was a great dive there's no self-reflection or introspection to make yourself better and Then they think well, I'm just gonna go to the IDC and then poof magically, you know My buoyancy propulsion trim is gonna be on point. I'll know exactly what to say and there's not a student in the world I can't communicate with like probably good luck with that one

Jay (20:16.009) Yeah.

Jay (20:19.85) Yep.

Jay (20:30.729) Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I think you make a good point there too about spreading it out over a longer period of time. Also, I think allowed me to gain a better, not only academic understanding, because the areas that maybe I needed to understand deeper. So if you go into Archimedes Principle or Boyle's Law or whatever thing that you got stuck on, those things that academically

I needed to go through a few more times to really comprehend it and be able to teach it. But then I also, because it was spread over a longer period of time, then got practical application of those things. So talk about a thing like Mendico, which is within our system, an approach, a strategy to recreational decompression. It's a way that we can approach it.

where we're in control of our decompression, even on our recreational dive. Yeah, there's your Mindico tables, right. So even in that, you can have an academic understanding of that, but then because it was spread over time, you get to put it into play, which of course, you and I were already doing in our diving, but then get it from a different angle of how I might teach this, right, which is interesting.

Kevin (21:50.083) But which is funny because I will fully admit that like I wasn't skeptical on ratio decon. I knew it had existed for a while. The whole doing it in your head sort of mentality. I'm like, okay. Well, the funny thing is, is I bought two computers, put one engaged and put the other in recreational with 4080 gradient effect. Another topic for another one. And I'm sitting there, I'm like, huh, they're the same. Huh, now I'm more conservative on this one. Huh, I feel better when I get out and fall on this one. Hmm, I guess it works.

Jay (22:17.561) Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Kevin (22:17.73) So like sometimes, yes, and that's a, there's two types of experience, right? Experience you find on your own and experience you learn from others. Some things within a controlled environment, you have to find out for yourself. So crashing an airplane is one of those ones that I don't need to figure out for myself. I know it doesn't work right. Yeah, it doesn't work well, yes.

Jay (22:30.257) Mm-hmm.

Jay (22:36.681) Yeah, bad. Yeah, bad. Yeah. No. And I think I think that is, again, one of the benefits of spreading that learning out and not putting kind of a too aggressive time. Yeah, artificial cap or too aggressive timeline on things is that you get the chance to wrestle with the places that you get where you got stuck is different than where I got stuck, right? Or whatever. And so you're able to sort some of that out and you're able to take the time you need.

Kevin (22:50.155) artificial cap.

Jay (23:05.465) And you have a support system, your IT, which in our case was, well, for both of us was Jeff, to work those things out in the background. And we could ask each other, you know, when we get stuck on things. And I thought that part of everything was really good. It made me better as a diver. It made me more confident. It made me much more knowledgeable as a diver and helped me see things that I've been doing already and applying from a different angle.

Um, when I, when I started to take the leadership route on it. So those are really positive things that I gained out of my IDC. And like I said, anything that can make you better is worth the investment of time. If you know, uh, and so like, even if it didn't result in the outcome that you want, the outcome really is not about the final destination. It's about that journey that people say, right? I found that to be very true in, uh, in my training at least.

Kevin (24:01.766) up. Stand by UTD is going to be making inspirational bumper stickers via J. No. Well, I think it's in the name it's team. What this forced me to do was to start interacting with people who are not military who don't think like me. You don't communicate like me. Slightly different sense of humor, which I may have run some people off with but

Jay (24:05.033) Yeah, well, no worry, we have the bad coming up. We'll get rid of those bumper stickers for a minute.

Kevin (24:29.138) It forces you, like, I think the IDC should not be, I'm going to become a great dive instructor. It's going to be, it's an interpersonal, I'm going to be a better human by learning how to communicate effectively to other people, how to work with different people, and then be able to accept criticism from those people and make myself better. Because the same, like Jeff openly says that he took a lot of this stuff, um, from flying and stuff. And I had been through those.

Jay (24:49.941) Mm-hmm.

Kevin (24:57.71) process, obviously in the military, but you sit back and you go, Hey, my instructor development training in flying was very similar, very similar paths of ups and downs, pun intended. And we're going to get to the downs here a second. And then you come out and you're like, I would have never talked to those people before. I would have never come up with this analogy. I would have never known about their background and how they think about flying. Holy shit. It makes you just a well rounded person who likes to go diving.

Jay (25:20.031) Mm-hmm.

Jay (25:25.929) Mm-hmm, yep. Yeah, and I think to that point, just to kind of give people some more reference here, some of the things that beyond the academics that obviously we needed to comprehend and demonstrate comprehension to, some of the tasks of correlation that we needed to record videos for, some of the personal skills stuff, I think that oftentimes can get frowned upon. Like for example, we were talking about the last one, holding buoyancy.

while doing, for example, basic six or shooting a SMB or something within, you know, plus or minus six inches and people kind of roll their eyes. And the point of that was taxing the, the buoyancy, the foundations, taxing the foundation strongly, the buoyancy and breathing, balance, trim, all of that while task loaded. It's not about shooting an SMB within six inches, plus or minus of buoyancy or position. It's about, are the foundations there?

And so I think we spent a lot of time looking at each other's videos. And I remember the first kind of level of response is always like, Oh, well, you went up there and he went down there. Like, you know, for me, it was always, um, you know, I think basically six, number three, I always ended up breathing myself up or bringing myself down because I was moving my body way too much in that recovery. I think for you, every time you, you took a mask off, you, you know, you hit down, you went, like, and so those are the easy things to give feedback about.

But then we started to understand, oh, this is the task loading of, it's not about you taking a mask off or me doing a reg recovery. It's actually about the buoyancy, the balance, the trim, the positioning. And that's what we're trying to kind of get dialed in. So I think that for that stuff, it worked fantastic. And I was really appreciative of that.

Okay, so is that enough good? Any other flowers and rainbows you want to throw out there?

Kevin (27:15.598) That was fine, man. The skills kit was fun. I enjoyed coming out there and we're gonna get to the bad stuff and that kind of stuff. But even when we showed up in Austin later on when the story like, it's just fun to get out of Louisiana and go with like-minded individuals to go dive. Like, it's fun.

Jay (27:36.169) You don't even have to finish that sentence with like-minded. It's fun to get out of Louisiana, I think. No, I'm sorry. No, I agree. I agree. All right. So let's maybe shift gears into maybe some of the bad, the struggles, not the sugar coat, anything, but what didn't go well for your instructor development.

Kevin (27:40.678) Good job. Yes. I'm not here by choice.

Kevin (27:58.294) I'd say there's, there are like expectations on what skills needed to be, but there wasn't an expectation on the timeline. And not necessarily like, hey, this is gonna take six months. This is gonna take a year. I didn't really care about that, but it's like, this needs to be accomplished. And then this needs to be accomplished. Then this needs to be accomplished. And you can't skip to the end without doing this thing in the middle. In the flying world, we have still business. And very rarely are we allowed to deviate. Now,

Jay (28:05.996) Mm.

Jay (28:25.771) Mm-hmm.

Kevin (28:26.338) If that takes two weeks to accomplish those tasks, then it takes that time and then we move on. But you can't skip things. And so it felt really like, what are we doing next? He's like, oh, well, let's do a lecture on this. Okay. And it's like, what are we doing next? Oh, let's do this. And it felt kind of, I wanted a calendar, maybe not a weekly calendar, but like a yearly calendar to go, we're going to have this stuff done.

Jay (28:47.306) Hehehehe

Kevin (28:53.366) in the first quarter, this stuff done in the second quarter, this stuff done in the third quarter. And everything can obviously slip to the right for weather, personal issues, and stuff like that. But this is the general flow of how things go.

Jay (29:06.077) Yeah, yeah, I think that's true. I think part of that, the nature of us being the guinea pigs or the pioneers, however you want to color that, is part of it. And then I think too, I think the feeling as an instructor candidate that caused is like, hey, I want to feel like I'm in the good care of my mentor that has a plan and a pathway.

start with that like trust. And then when it starts to unfold and you go like, well, wait a minute, I'm not seeing how these things connect. And like, now there's this thing coming out of the blue that I was totally unaware of. It starts to kind of get to a place where you're like, is there a pathway or are we just playing jazz? You know, like, is this just, you know, like, yeah, let's see how this note works today. And I didn't, how do you know, that's how it felt in.

Kevin (29:38.932) Mm-hmm.

Kevin (29:43.875) Cough

Kevin (30:01.057) Yeah.

Jay (30:04.765) as we got towards the, I think the end of it, not in the beginning of it, in the beginning you had that trust towards the end of like, towards that skills camp, it was kind of like, and even in, I would say even approaching the skills camp, we still felt somewhat like we were playing, you know, an actual sheet music, and then all of a sudden it felt like we're playing jazz, you know, and that was a big shocker for, I think both of us in that case.

Yeah. So I can, I can go next on the bad. I think the other thing that, that was a struggle and you already mentioned it a bit, but it's worth, I think I told the story a long time ago on the podcast, but you know, everything culminated towards the skills camp, which skills camp is a really cool idea as a skills camp, which is, you know, divers from around the country come in and they spend, you know, I think it was what three or four days, um, in a pool, no certification, exactly just getting better. And so you're, you're really working on.

Kevin (30:47.518) Absolutely.

Kevin (30:52.815) This is something like that. No certification. It's getting better.

Jay (31:00.769) those foundational skills and you had a slew of instructors there that were, worked, could work one-on-one, you know, when you got stuck, all those things. We were there. And I think again, kind of in the, in the carry the metaphor of jazz forward, there was an attempt to kind of make the IDC plus, you know, uh, the skills camp and everything, you know, you could see the vision if it all worked well, could come together because you've got real students in the pool.

and all that stuff. That's not how it worked.

Kevin (31:33.154) It's funny because on Friday, standard military, I'm just now, the paperwork's still getting processed. I'm now an evaluator to where I can give check rides. Well, to be evaluated, well, to do that, you have to be evaluated by a current check pilot to make sure that you meet the standards. So the funny thing is that I have a student in the seat that I'm evaluating and I'm getting evaluated on how well I can give him an evaluation.

all going on. It's not the same thing at skills camp. It's like, Oh, by the way, you're being evaluated or how good you can run a skills camp to students. Oh, by the way, you're quasi a student yourself. So evaluate yourself on how good you can be a student while correcting your student mistakes. Meanwhile, us evaluating you are going to go on a brewery tour. Have fun.

Jay (32:15.069) Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It was just like an onion. Let's go. It goes back to Shrek, right? Like it had so many layers to it that like, we, I remember one time I'm standing there and, and we had gone through a series of things and it wasn't like we were assigned to specific things just yet or any, but you know, the students were in the pool and I was kind of acting like a dive master, like, okay, they're on the pool at some point and instructors going to come and take control of this mess and you know, yeah.

Kevin (32:40.854) We were lifeguards, we were sitting there going like, hey, you over there, stop running. No one's dead yet.

Jay (32:45.225) Yeah, I was sitting there waiting. And I remember like, you know, I had given my rig to somebody else, my fins to somebody else who wanted to try those. You know, it was just kind of dive mastering, sitting there in the pool. And I remember, you know, James Mott, who is now your mentor. And I remember this was my real first interaction with him was like, he came up to me and he's like, hey man, this is a circus. And I looked at him like, yeah, you're right. What are you gonna do about it? And then a few minutes later he came back to me and goes, hey man, this is a circus.

What are you going to do about it? And I was like, this is my job. Like, what do you mean it's my job to go do that? You're the instructor. What do you mean? And so like I hastily put on my gear, you know, my, uh, my necklace is like, you know, trapped behind my back. Cause I'm this guy just told me to get in the water and do something. And I'm, you know, anyways, it became this kind of monkey show for us. I think the students had a great time, but for us knowing what is our role, what are, what are we even being evaluated on? I didn't know that I was supposed to do anything in this moment.

Kevin (33:27.746) Yeah.

Jay (33:43.805) became really frustrating over time because it wasn't clear. And to be fair, I think on the other side, I think there was a concept of how it could have worked and maybe some wishful thinking, but not a lot of like, this is how it's gonna work.

Kevin (34:00.022) an IT huddle would have been probably best. Like the night before, you know, everyone, you know, Jeff, James, Kim, all get together and go, this is at the end, this is what we want for the students who signed up. This is what we want for Jay and Kevin. And this is how we're gonna play it. Maybe a little bit of, you know, an IT huddle to do that might've worked out. But once again, like it's one of those things, the farther away from a traumatic experience you are, the...

Jay (34:02.785) Yes.

Kevin (34:26.882) funnier and you tend to laugh more about it, what we're doing right now. So, it wasn't funny yet.

Jay (34:30.909) Exactly. Yeah. It was, it wasn't funny at the time. The end of all this was we were told, you know, at the end of all this, that still we didn't really get an evaluation in flight. So it was kind of like at the end, yeah, there's some things we need to figure out before we kind of give the sign off. And it was like, what things? We'll talk about it later. It's like, what? And I think we both had at least like two more days because we had

plan those days is like cleanup. And so I just remember, and this is the funny story to tell everyone the bad and it's now funny, but at the time it wasn't. Once we got that news, it was, I was devastated. I was super upset and frustrated. I won't put words in your mouth how you felt, but I know that's how I felt. And I remember we, yeah, you're like, I need donuts. And there was like a donut store somewhere like, okay, I think we got like a.

Kevin (35:00.862) Yeah, yeah, we spent more down.

Kevin (35:18.81) I just put donuts. I just ate my own. It was a crispy cream across the street.

Jay (35:28.821) dozen Krispy Kreme and sat by the pool of the hotel and just devoured the Krispy Kreme donuts as like a salve to our bruised egos and minds at that moment. That's how I felt. I mean, it was exactly that.

Kevin (35:32.477) I'm sorry.

Kevin (35:42.657) I was just eating my emotions.

Jay (35:46.639) And it, I mean, it did, it turned out, you know, in that moment, how it all felt really bad, really feeling bad. So yeah, that's maybe the best.

Kevin (35:56.882) I will say the other funny bad thing that drove me up the wall, you remember when we were doing fin kicks or talking and demonstrating fin kicks. So like, I think you were trying to talk through the frog kick. And then James stops you halfway and goes, no, this is how we got to do it and stuff like that. And then he goes, and Jeff goes, all right, Kevin, you're gonna teach the back kick. And I go, okay, great. In my mind, I'm like, just don't do what Jay did and James won't take your fins away from you.

Jay (36:03.391) Mm-hmm.

Kevin (36:26.866) And I go, you guys remember what Jay was talking about with the frog kick where you use the bottom of your feet? And before I could get out, well, we're not going to do that now. We're going to use the side of our fins. Jeff steps in and he goes, no, you don't do it that way. Takes my fins and starts teaching. I was like, one, you didn't let me finish my sentence to you. Just took my fins. What the fuck do you want me to do here? Like, I seriously don't know what I'm doing here. And then he goes to proceed. And I'm like, well, I'm going to jump in the pool and just, you know.

Jay (36:41.303) Hahaha

Jay (36:47.327) Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Kevin (36:55.146) I'm gonna go collect all the spare weight at the bottom of the pool and just spit my rag out and see what happens. So.

see if the lifeguard really is on duty. Yeah, yeah. Well, we did that and it's funny because then Greg walks by, cause he's still there. I think Shane Fay was still there. He's like, what are you guys doing? And I'm like, I'm devouring my emotions in like a Krispy Kreme donut. You want one? He's like, no, you need all of them. I'm like, thanks man.

Jay (37:02.444) Yeah. I'm going to go sit in the corner and eat donuts.

Jay (37:21.693) Yeah, exactly. You guys, congratulations, you guys passed. Oh no, we don't even know why we didn't pass at this point. But yeah, it was maybe a bridge too far in terms of trying to accomplish all of that in one go with the skills camp. And so we took the brunt of that for sure in that moment. And we, I think it was...

Kevin (37:24.462) And it sounds like, no we didn't.

Kevin (37:28.588) Yeah.

Kevin (37:39.394) There's more.

Jay (37:45.701) We learned that we can both be good commiserating partners. I think we turned it around. We were able to have a good time. That's where we ended up going to some aeronautics museums and had a good time.

Kevin (37:54.998) Yeah. Well, I think that's where my military dark humor comes in. Like, there's gonna be shitty situations. You gotta laugh about it. You gotta find the funny jokes in it.

Jay (38:05.717) Yeah, at the time it was hard to do. And I think, I think now looking back, um, that, that wasn't, that was definitely, you could say suboptimal, but it was crappy. And, and now we can get to the resolve. Any, any other bad before we get to the resolve here? Yeah. So the, so let's, let's kind of resolve this. So we leave skills camp, bad taste, donut taste in our mouth and all. And, um, and yeah, we put in all this work and all this time. And it was kind of that, like I'm putting my gear on.

Kevin (38:18.769) No, that was fun.

Jay (38:35.557) on Facebook marketplace and I'm not going to dive again feeling of like, I don't know what the heck. Yeah.

Kevin (38:39.466) I didn't do that. I got in the car and drove to Florida and buried myself in a cave.

Jay (38:43.685) Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You dealt with it differently. Um, but I think, uh, you know, not shortly or not, not too long after that, we got on a call and to Jeff's credit and to the credit of UTD, he basically said, Hey, I aft up. Um, we made a mistake and, you know, tried to pack too many things into one, uh, you know, soup and it, it didn't work and you guys took the brunt of it. And now it's my job to fix it. And so there was, uh, you know, him,

at least putting out the plan exactly what we needed in terms of what was next. And for us, there was a little bit of difference between that plan, but pretty much the same, which was, hey, let's go and take some of these courses to get a foundation to how we teach this and how we teach that. And then let's reevaluate. And so it kind of set us off a path of like making a decision as to whether or not I was going to do that.

whether I wanted to be a UT instructor or if I was going to figure out when the next patty IDC was and go jump in the two week program there. Um, we're all on the, on the plate at that point, but for me, I made the decision to stick with it and, um, and I'm very glad I did. Uh, I'll just say that. And for me, the resolve was I, we went and did those things. I gained a lot out of those experiences and kind of my end up was I was in a tech one course with our training director and James.

Kevin (39:46.515) Yeah.

Jay (40:11.493) down in Florida a while back ago. And I remember we went to dinner and this was a Tech One course with another team. You know, it was me as a student in the Tech One course, learning all of that. And we went to dinner one night and Ben, you know, turned to me and said, "'Hey, like, why aren't you running any open water classes? Why don't you go back home and run some water classes?' And I said, "'Well, because I can't.'"

I'm a dive master and I can do ESM. Yeah, like jerk, like what, you know, like I can't, like why are you asking me why I'm not doing open waters? Cause you guys said I can't, like, you know, like what do you mean? Like, this is a, yeah, not a nice question. And it was a beautiful dinner area on the water as most of the keys are, it's really nice. And he goes, no, well, why don't you go home and start running some open water classes? I'm like, dude, I just, I just told, I can't.

Kevin (40:40.93) Just keep putting that salt in the wound and keep twisting that.

Jay (41:07.477) Like, that sounds nice, but I can't do that. I can run some more. Do you want me to run more ESM? It's like, what do you want me, what do you want from me? You know, like, and like by the third time he was, you know, they're kind of laughing at me, James and him like, no, why don't you go back home and start running some open water classes? Do you understand the words coming out of my mouth? I was like, well, the only way I could do that is if you're telling me that I'm now an instructor. He's like, yeah, dummy.

And he goes, congratulations. Then it was like a big, Hey, congratulations, you know, hugs and all that stuff. And I had passed little did I know during that time, they were also doing an evaluation of me, um, in terms of that final sign off, second sign off on my first sign off and my second one. And I got signed off. So that's how I ended up becoming UTD instructor. Um, I'll never forget that moment and that, that day. And, uh, and again, it wasn't something I was expecting. So it was a surprise.

And it's a beautiful thing. I'm super happy that it all resolved in that way. Yeah, that was kind of my resolution to my journey.

Kevin (42:12.494) Did the top stop spinning and fall over on the table? Old inception land? Bring it here.

Jay (42:15.741) Yeah, the phone stopped ringing, you know, the food stopped sizzling, and it was perfect. No, no. Felt like that though.

Kevin (42:23.214) Now, mine was, well, so part of that was we still had to do an essentials class. We did it in Austin in 110 degrees heat. James almost died of dehydration. Shang-Fei, well, I mean, that's why the lake's 46 feet low now is because Shang-Fei decided to take half of it up in his dry suit with him. Yeah, he's like, oh, this neck seal needs to be snapped in. Yes, it does, buddy. And I'm sitting there like.

Jay (42:28.172) Mm-hmm.

Jay (42:31.949) Yeah, James almost died. Yep. Changfei flooded the suit.

Jay (42:44.447) His dry suit exactly.

Jay (42:49.941) Ha ha ha.

Kevin (42:52.362) And don't take this the wrong way. But I'm sitting here like this is another, like I had to take vacation time, had to drive all the way out here. And all we're doing is valve drills and some other stuff, which we had done all the time on our videos fine. And James walks up to me at the end and he's like, hey man, how are you feeling? I'm like, just another class man, trying to have fun at this. And I was like, all right. At that point, he's like, all right, cool. So we passed Essentials of Rec or yeah.

of Iraq. And I head home and talked to my wife and I'm like, this is two UTD events, large, large events in a row that I'm like, screw it. I'm just going to bury myself in a cave in Florida and just go cave diving down there. And she's like, well, you gotta you gotta let them down softly. Like you gotta at least call them and say thank you for the opportunity and the try and dude, I had written up some pretty strongly worded emails that obviously, if you're if you're emotional, don't hit sent.

Jay (43:46.741) Mm.

Jay (43:50.193) Yeah, that's a good idea.

Kevin (43:50.69) Do not hit send, you can't take that one back. And so I was on the verge of calling Jeff up and saying, hey, thanks, but you know, I'm gonna go another route. This whole egging me on every little bit and it's not going, like I was already an accomplished diver. I had done, I'd finally got into the caves. Cool, everything was going great. Not to UTD standards, got it. But I was having fun and diving. And so I'm sitting in my office.

And Jeff's like, Hey, we'll call tomorrow 9am or something like that. And I literally had written out in front of me, like my strongly worded, but very polite answer that I was going to get when he picked up the phone. So he calls. I'm like, all right, brace yourself. All right. I pick up the phone and Jeff goes, Hey, I just talked with James and we were talking about stuff and we want to make you sign off on your instructor cert. You're now a UTD instructor. Granted, I hadn't even picked up the phone other than saying, hello, this is Kevin.

Jay (44:26.189) I'm going to go ahead and close the video.

Kevin (44:47.562) And he had said that and I still have my like strongly worded two page word response and I go and I crumple it up and throw it in the trash. I'm like, all right, well, cool. It's like, what do we have to do? He's like, well, I got to get the paperwork and you got to, you know, show me liability and insurance. And, uh, I go, cool. And I hang up with Jeff. Very grateful. I call my wife. I'm like, you'll never believe it's like, I picked up the phone and they said I'm an instructor. And she's like, she's like.

Jay (44:52.711) Hahaha.

Jay (44:57.357) Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

Kevin (45:15.158) Very typical, like it was highs and lows. So very much with flying, you got ups and downs and that kind of stuff. So I guess my evaluation was how was I gonna do with, how do I put this? The environment and the participants in that essentials class. I think Jeff and James knew that I was diving wise, skill wise fine.

Jay (45:38.166) Mm-hmm.

Kevin (45:43.294) It was how are you going to interact with people in a less than ideal environment? Because it was hot, it was muggy. We were doing the same thing over again. It wasn't necessarily the issues I was having that was an issue. It was issues that the team was having and how do you become a team member? Let's put it that way. And we worked through them. And it was, hey, you jammed up the reel, let me unjam it for you. Here you go. Let's keep having fun with this. You signal to go down, I go down.

Jay (46:00.907) Mm-hmm.

Kevin (46:12.674) James goes, you're dead, because the rest of your team's on the surface. And I'm like, but wait a second, they said to go down. You have to wait for them. But they said to go down. Why aren't they at the surface? Oh, because issues. Stuff like that. Like it was, it was its own fun little game. So a little bit of mind tricks, but I mean, that's, I should have known because very similar mind tricks were played in my instructor upgrade for the T6 and in the B52. So that, that's one of those things that.

They're not necessarily always grading you on how good you can fly or how well you can dive. They're grading on you in an adverse scenario and seeing how much mental toughness you're willing to show before you give up. Because anyone can sit in the pool and get really good at valve drills and basic sex. It takes another person when your student's late, when they forget stuff, when you're dressed in the water and you're baking for you to get out of the water, go get the thing that they forgot and get back in and still be in a cool enough position to not scream at them when they screw something else up.

Jay (47:09.983) Right.

Kevin (47:10.326) which is a mark of a true instructor is why are you there? You're there to help them. So.

Jay (47:17.353) Yeah. And I think a good IT is able to personalize those things, right? Um, personalize those, those layers, right. Of what does Kevin need to become a great instructor and let's sign off. Because yeah, I mean, we're signing off on him going out and teaching this way of diving and representing our organization, all these other things that, you know, there's a big side of that for the organization, whichever organization is, yeah. And I think for me, my

My area of growth was definitely on not being the teacher, but being the teammate, right? How am I going to just dive and not have to be, you know, the one that's, you know, that's always the captain of the team? And that was my growth of, you know, cause for me I'm a natural or have been told, and so I've learned, natural leader. And so how do I not just draft off of that natural, you know,

whatever God given talent or however you want to put it and actually get into the nitty gritty of the diving, the team side of it. So again.

Kevin (48:22.05) Yeah. That's the hardest thing in flying that I've had to, is not talking to your student, even though you see the train wreck coming. And you hope at the last minute, the student sees the train wreck and deviates and saves it. But that's the worst. You're like, hey man, I wanna talk to you. We're 30 seconds away from something bad happening. I can see it coming. Man, if you just do this one thing and you gotta sit there and hold your tongue, and then you're at 15 seconds. You're like, come on, man. You're at.

Jay (48:32.429) Mm-hmm.

Jay (48:38.025) Yeah.

Jay (48:47.818) Yep. Yeah.

Kevin (48:50.702) 10 seconds you're like I'm about to take the airplane and at five seconds he goes Oh, this isn't right and does according you're like, yes but the number of times beforehand where at five seconds you had to take the airplane or Take control of the diver or take control to dive There's reps and that's learning and that's gonna happen. But it's towards the end that you sit back and go This is not nice. I can see what's gonna happen This is gonna get fun and then let it happen But keep your bubble small because you can't let people kill themselves. I mean, obviously

Jay (48:57.375) Yeah.

Kevin (49:21.203) Um, and do that. That's like, no, you're.

Jay (49:22.165) Yeah, that was exactly the, oops, sorry. Yeah. That was exactly, you're exactly right. I mean, you hit the nail on the head there because we, during that tech one course, you know, we had whatever failure it was where, um, there was a gas sharing on the deco stop happening and I just see like the two team members drifting apart. And one of the guys, you know, drifting, not paying attention and.

And I'm going over there like holding their literally grabbing their hands and bringing them back together on the line and like, you know, no, do this and like stay here. And like, you know, then I'm babysitting the whole time and all this stuff. And, and we got, you know, it was all on video from Ben and, and he goes, you know, later he took me aside and said, Hey, take a look at this. And I said, yeah, well, like, what, what do you want me to do? You know, like let them drift off and off he goes to the surface and he goes, yeah, kind of. And I was like,

Kevin (50:13.906) Yeah. It's like, you're not the captain at the point. Sit back.

Jay (50:17.013) Oh, light bulb. He said, instead, you should be right there, ready for that right to come out of the mouth with your hand on your long hose ready to donate that thing. So when it when it plays itself out, you're there as a teammate to save that guy or what deal with that situation. But you what you did by solving it before it happened, even though you saw it play out as you took that learning away from everybody else and you played no Superman team captain, Captain America.

And that was my big light bulb moment of like, Oh, I didn't get that. My job is not to prevent everything that could go wrong from going wrong, which is kind of that captain mindset. My job is to actually, you know, deal, decide what things actually are life threatening that I do need to play Captain America on most things. I need to allow them to happen and be prepared for what's, what's going to happen.

Kevin (51:08.45) That's why I left your shitty jump spool and overhead protocols so that we came back and it was just a sea of string and seven foot waves. But no, it's like, yeah, we had similar experiences and essentials that you had in tech one and that kind of stuff, but long story short, it is a challenging but rewarding road. And so I guess we can get to where is it leading us now?

Jay (51:15.229) Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it was it was a bad one. It was not well tied off. Yeah. These are the learnings, right?

Jay (51:38.027) Yeah.

Kevin (51:38.766) I took about a year off after that just because work I was transitioning from Active duty to reserves there's stuff going on But I started putting effort into it I got two open water students right now who just did their first pool experience Which is pretty good Still working through things and like I said, I've been in conversation with James about hey, I've seen this isn't a trend How do I correct it?

and he started bouncing ideas off. And I think we're getting in the pool on Thursday or Saturday of this week. So obviously those are gonna be tucked in my back pocket for, hey, if they don't work or if they do work or not. I will say my first successful UTD cert that I signed off on was my wife's dry suit one. She had a really good instructor. So.

Jay (52:22.687) Nice.

named Jay Gardner. No, I'm just kidding.

Kevin (52:29.998) She's been my guinea pig. So every time we had to go teach one of these things I would she's she was a patty certified diver. So she's been long and I go hey, babe This back plate is really nice. You should have one. She's like, okay, you should have a separate. Okay Hey, you want to go to the pool? Does this mean you'll come out to the farm and help me with the horses? Yes. Okay, so we went to the pool and This brings up another story It is possible to get hypothermic in 68 degree water if you do three 50 minute dives back to back

Jay (52:42.434) Hehehehehehe

Jay (52:59.959) Sure.

Kevin (53:02.235) And what that normally results in is you buying a $2,300 dry suit for your wife. So that was a fun story in its own learning. Like obviously if you're in a dry suit, obviously check in on your students if they're in wetsuits and make sure they give you the truth data and not just shake their head and go along because they're your spouse. But she got in the dry suit. We did all the skills and stuff. She did great. And then we jumped into the ocean,

Jay (53:07.114) Yeah.

Kevin (53:30.166) She's been awesome as my permadive buddy, which is great. If you can't find one, marry one. That's, yeah, yeah. And so my goal is I'm lucky enough that every about six months, a new set of 30 students walks through the door for B52 instruction training. One of the deployed locations is Guam. So basically I've seen the dive operations on Guam. I've seen the instructors because that's where I got my tech search stuff done.

Jay (53:37.159) That's your advice. That's good.

Kevin (53:59.818) And I'm basically going, hey, how about instead of spending your deployment out there learning to dive, how about you come learn to dive with me here locally? Um, and so you're more prepared. And it's, it's also like a, I've seen the quality of the dive instruction out there, or at least when I was out there in 2018, 2019, and I can think from a commander standpoint, if they knew what their students, their, their airmen are getting into that they would probably want a higher level of training. Um,

Jay (54:27.146) Mm.

Kevin (54:28.434) An average pilot in the United States Air Force has five to seven million dollars worth of training before they can get to a combat airplane. So to have someone get sub par training, go out having fun on the weekends and then hurt themselves and then not be able to execute the mission that you're deployed there for. Probably not a good idea. So I've now obviously there's a conflict of interest of grading students and then accepting money for that. So I've worked that through the squadron stuff and I don't fly with those students. For that reason.

Jay (54:54.847) Mm.

Kevin (54:57.358) because I don't want there to be a conflict of interest. I'm just going to grade you regardless of any scuba stuff we do on the side. But my goal is moving forward is to provide really good sound education for military members here at Barksdale. If there are civilians around in the local area, you know, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas would be more than happy to travel. We could work something out. But to help them out, try to get six students done a year. So that gives two.

students every two months, which I think is normally a pretty good amount of window to get stuff done. Obviously, there's going to be outliers. People get done faster or delay a little bit longer. But focus on making quality, not quantity, enjoying the trip and then hopefully forever be a student. I think that's the biggest thing that you need to find in an instructor. If your instructor goes, hey, I got certified in 83 and I haven't taken a class since and I'm a super instructor, maybe. But I find like all the really good ones are always learning.

Jay (55:52.489) Yeah.

Kevin (55:54.542) They're always being students. They're always willing to be humble, put themselves in vulnerable situations, let their ego go. Because normally getting to an instructor in any development or any hobby or sport takes a lot. And you should be proud of that achievement. But at the same time, you can't rest on your laurels and you have to, tactics change, new techniques, new procedures come up, new ways of teaching stuff. And it doesn't have to be scuba too. Like if you're super scuba guru instructor.

Like I said, like go find another hobby that you're not good at. And I don't know if there's knitting on. I need you to knit me a tank cover. Go learn, yeah, there you go. Cause then I can grab 30 pounds of lead and put on me. And go be vulnerable again and learn what it feels like to be a student.

Jay (56:26.737) knitting.

Jay (56:34.249) There you go. Exactly. Tank koozie.

Kevin (56:47.638) Because if you go around thinking, oh, I remember what it's like a student. Yeah, we walked uphill both ways in the snow and like you young millennial Gen Z, whatever whippersnippers don't know what it's like. It's like, maybe you should learn to go be a student again. Like, yes, there's some issues with the generation and generationals have different ways of learning and teaching. But you gotta be willing to go out there and understand at least a little bit from where they're coming from and how they learn and how they interact. So.

Jay (56:54.027) Yeah.

Kevin (57:15.062) That's my path for mastery right now is own everything open circuit, be a really good instructional teacher, learn as much as I can from mentors. And you and I both have cave one, cave two coming up. So get up for some cave diving. It'll be fun.

Jay (57:33.657) That's right. Nice. Well, yeah, I'll be brief in mind. I mean, I think out of my instructor becoming a certified instructor, I, so I'm a baby instructor. Both of us are babies in the, in the UTD system and still building reputation. I started Gardner underwater and got that off the ground and have focused a lot on the coaching program side of things. I've really enjoyed that.

Um, which was birthed on a podcast. What are you going to call this thing? Like, I don't know, Gardner underwater. I don't know. Whatever. Okay. Fine. There it is.

Kevin (58:04.11) harder.

Kevin (58:08.456) You've done more. I have a Facebook page for my business. And yeah, that's the extent. It's word of mouth right now. So.

Jay (58:11.765) There you go. Ha ha ha.

Jay (58:15.845) Exactly. Yeah. And I think there's some reputation building and I focused a lot on the coaching and I've had some great coaching clients and, you know, bringing people from, you know, the usually for me, I've been more on the taking people that are coming from a different agency and wanting to learn a different way. So certified divers, not necessarily certifying open water divers, but divers that are coming from a different agency transitioning to our way of diving. It's been a lot of fun. And then

Yeah, I think my relationship with UTD is evolving and then firming up and all of those things and different opportunities there that are soon to be announced. I think if they're not already, uh, when this airs, I'm not sure. So we'll see. But, uh, but yeah, I think that's been my journey and my goal. I think as an instructor, it will number one is for me to get better as a diver. So like we were talking about cave one, cave two coming up in a couple of months here, um, and then I'm also looking at rebreather.

and because there's some very clear applications for it in my local diving here that excite me. And so.

Kevin (59:19.554) You know what we should do? Underwater magician. Let's find it. Let's do it.

Jay (59:22.757) Underwater magician. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um, and, and I think I'm, I'm always in that continual student mode, which I love about scuba just as soon as you feel like you're, you're on the high horse, you know, there's another thing to learn. But I think for me, if my goal, part of my goal as an instructor is to build a reputation here, not as a, you know, look at this bad, a, you know, instructor and how great I am, but as somebody who's a part of this community. And so that's been my.

My focus is really how do I build relationships and community here and not, you know, necessarily be, although by nature I'll be a competitor, but by I hope design, it will be more of an enhancement to my local diving. I mean, I live in a place now, moving back to San Diego, that diving is really a way of life. I mean, there's a very active diving community here. And so I, again, I'm trying very hard not to be.

coming in as a, you know, a know it all or anything like that. Cause I don't, and I, and I don't want to come across that way. And sometimes in our way of diving, I'll say DIR, there's a reputation for that. Um, that precedes us, uh, no matter where you go. And so I've just been trying to, to again, establish relationships and dive with people and have fun. And, you know, if there's questions about what I can provide, then I can do that. And then I'm doing coaching. And so.

Well, within a few years, I hope to again, have a healthy DIR foundation of divers here in San Diego and in Southern California, and then be able to build from that into, you know, looking at where's left, where can we go explore and building some of that kind of like what I did with Team Six Skill in Texas, but do a San Diego chapter here. So that's my goals. And again, you know, I think if you live in the...

the Texas or Louisiana greater area. Let's say that circle around there, however many miles. Kevin's a great instructor. I would go there and talk to him and see what you can do. And I know that you've taken some students down to Florida as well. You're willing to go down that far sometimes, which is great.

Kevin (01:01:33.994) Oh, yeah, absolutely. Cause the, uh, the local diving scene is, is not, not great. I'm a, obviously there's some lakes in Texas and other places, but, uh, unfortunately you got to travel, but Hey, let's put the work in the pools. Let's knock that stuff out so that, uh, when you do travel, it's worth it. Right. I get it. Vacations, hard to come five finances. I get it time away from the family, but anything worth right.

Jay (01:01:52.925) Exactly.

Kevin (01:01:59.678) or anything worth doing is worth doing right. And I don't want to take more time away from you than what's necessary. So you put the work in, I'll put the work in, we'll go have fun.

Jay (01:02:09.057) All right, so to end this one, rapid response here, one word response. We'll do two or three of these. One, are you glad you became an instructor? Yes. When I say donut, what do you think?

Kevin (01:02:19.499) Yes.

Kevin (01:02:26.759) Sprinkles. Sprinkles are for winners.

Jay (01:02:26.793) Sprinkles. Sprinkles are for winners. Okay, when I say caffeine, what do you think? The monster, okay. All right, so you didn't think of, I thought you were gonna say like life or like God's nectar or.

Kevin (01:02:34.224) Monster. Two a day.

Kevin (01:02:40.639) Okay, oh.

It's funny, people think it comes from the military and I'm sure some people get addicted to caffeine in the military. But for me, it was, uh, I am not a smart person by any means. And to get through an engineering degree at Virginia Tech, it required lots of late nights. So, uh, coffee, coffee and monsters, man. All right.

Jay (01:03:01.049) and monster. Yeah. All right. Two more of these because they're funny. We'll do pool fins in the pool later because that would be fun too. But okay. If I say late night dinner.

Kevin (01:03:16.766) In terms of what? Like...

Jay (01:03:18.513) Where are you going? What comes to mind? Or what are you having?

Kevin (01:03:21.822) Latent... I don't know. Chicken fingers.

Jay (01:03:25.365) Chicken figure. I would immediately say burritos to that one, like tacos, burritos, because that's what's open. All right. Last one.

Kevin (01:03:32.79) Every, yeah, I'm gonna kick it.

It's a requirement. It's life.

Jay (01:03:38.285) requirement. Nice. Okay. Boyancy is life. That's a good, there's a good t-shirt right there. Boyancy is life. I had Diving is Life. I tried to catch that, get that caught on because of Ted Lasso. I don't know if you saw that show. I really enjoyed it. It was funny. But they had that one character on there. He's like, football is life. And I was like, Diving is life. That'd be so funny, but it never caught on.

Kevin (01:03:42.326) Boise's life.

Kevin (01:03:49.324) Mm-hmm.

Kevin (01:03:56.087) out here.

Kevin (01:03:59.466) I think you should make the parody. You know the South American guy that it's like, whatever, straight to jail. It's like split fence, straight to jail. Walking on the bound, straight to jail. Air McDoodle, straight to jail.

Jay (01:04:07.562) Yeah, straight to jail. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Straight to jail. Yeah, that'd be funny. All right. Well, good. Yeah, I think in all in all, this is a pretty honest take on instructor development and our paths at least. I certainly think it was worth it. And if you'd like to talk to either of us more about your journey as an instructor, maybe you didn't get all of this and you're wondering what the heck are we talking about.

Or, you know, you are thinking about becoming an instructor. I think this, both Kevin and I are pretty open about our experiences in doing that and, and recommendations of how we might do it better. Um, you know, starting out or, or how we might get more out of the program, those sorts of things. So feel free to reach out. We'd love to talk to you. Uh, thanks for listening. And we hope to have you back on the next episode of the dive table.