It was an emotionally trying day. As much as I tried I could not get over my nervousness. The level of understanding and empathy that I have for my fellow candidates and for future IDC Students is something that, If nothing else, is the biggest take-away from this program. That and the people that I am working with on my team. They are simply the best. We have people from all over the world on my team and they are amazingly talented individuals. It is a joy to work with them and after today I feel that they will be people that I keep in touch with forever. The other candidates are equally as talented, we have just been concentrating on working with our team.
So the day was supposed to be a day where we lecture in the morning, do our first confined water presentation and out first confined water evaluation in the ocean in confined open water. I had sat up late and prepared, double checked my outline and I was ready. Then we had an announcement just before lunch. We were not going to confined water in the ocean but were going to be using the pool and we needed to prepare our second confined water evaluation. We were given about an hour and a half for that preparation and lunch. The nerves came back.
The level of perfection that I witnessed in the pool was awe inspiring, the first three presentations given were flawless and it increased my anxiousness. I was the first evaluator. Needless to say I was really confident but when you give a person such remarkable scores you get the feeling you may have done something wrong. You see, as an evaluator we have to match the scores of the control or CD -Trainer who is also evaluating. That has, in the past been something I excelled at so the only part I was concerned about was that I would miss something. There were nearly 50 people sharing the pool.
When it came time for me to do my presentation I choked a little. Got through it, knew I had made a mistake and also knew that I didn't have to be perfect just score better than average.
When it was all over we waited for the CDTC Trainer to give us our scores and counsel us on the mistakes we made. Other than being the last one to sit for it, it was the best experience because I was able to remedy my nervousness and self doubt a bit. I had passed... with a perfect match on the evaluation and only having missed two of the possible points on the confined water presentation. I know that they will not happen again.
Passed the second day. Win!
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