Day 3 of the IDC started early for Bill and I. We all went out the night before for dinner, drinks and some live music, so Patrick was late to class since he and one of the divemasters stayed longer. We had to present our first classroom presentation and we were all a bit nervous. Although we all pretty much sucked, it definitely left us with the little bit of certainty that we couldn’t do much worse the next time! After some more classroom lecture, we broke for lunch then headed to the pool for our confined water demos. MUCH better than the previous day even though two of us got 1’s. We had a good deal of laughs and learned so much more about our presentation techniques, recognizing problems and overcoming them and attention to the little things needed for our rapidly approaching IE. Might I add that this all took place during a glorious rainstorm with giant lighting and heart pounding thunder. I have never witnessed lightning from underwater before so, it was interesting, to say the least.
Preparing for the classroom presentations is interesting. You research your topic, look for clever contact and try to make sure you cover all the points needed to score well. Once that is done and you’re feeling pretty confident, BAM, you realize you are going to have to get up in front of people and present it. I doesn’t sound all that scary because hey, you’ve done all this work preparing, should be a piece of cake. Until you are up there…all your notes you spent so much time getting on paper all look like Chinese. Mouth is dry, you forget which points you wanted to emphasize and you realize you forgot the main prop you were going to use. Did I mention that this went WAY better that the previous day?
So, off we go. Another night of prepping for the next day’s assignment. Siday made yummy chicken and vegetables for dinner!