It was something like 4 o’clock on a Thursday morning. I walked to the kitchen and pounded my head on the counter until coffee magically came out of the machine. I looked at the assortment of bags
packed on the floor by the front door—my cute Vera Bradley duffel looked funny
hanging out with my fins and snorkel. I headed out the door towards the Aquatic
Center with bright eyes. Athens, Ohio had been kissed by one of its first
frosts of the year, all the more reason to get the heck down to Florida. As we
packed up the trailer and everybody put themselves back to bed, I reviewed what
had engulfed my stress for the nine weeks prior: OU SCUBA.
“Did you know SCUBA is actually an acronym?”: the only thing
I actually knew about it going into the class.
Our first day was like an episode of "1000 Ways to Die"—SCUBA
edition. The instructors sat us down and told us anything and everything that
could go wrong while we’re diving. Like how your skin could fall off, or how
you could get bubbles in your blood and your skin would fall off, or how the
bends would make your skin gross right before you died, or how a shark could
come up behind you and tear all of your skin off.
Then we signed a release form.
I immediately called my expert diver boyfriend crying. We had planned a big dive trip to the
Dutch Caribbean with his family for Christmas break, but I wasn’t about to go
near any water after this first class.
Somehow, I managed to make it to the swim test.
And to the next class.
And to the next pool lab.
And I kept going back, learning something new every time, going
out of my comfort zone every time.
The next nine weeks of class gave us more information and
practice in the pool than any other introductory SCUBA training I’ve ever heard
of. We learned a lot of badass techniques that most divers
don’t know—like different kinds of dives, swimming to the bottom of the pool
and clearing our mask (getting the water out) all in one breath. We learned how
to dive down, gear in hand, and put it all on underwater.
The instructors were total characters, but they also helped
you keep calm, while pushing you to push yourself. I have never had a professor
genuinely care so much about my success in a class.
At the beginning of pool labs, I was struggling getting my
ears to clear on my way to the bottom of the pool—if you don’t clear your ears,
the pressure builds up, and the pain is unbearable. My instructor brought me
solution for swimmer’s ear the next day.
One instructor had me pushing myself harder than I ever had
before. He couldn’t believe how horrible I was at holding my breath. (which, was actually quite horrible.)
“Are you an athlete?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m a runner.”
“Then why do you have no lung capacity to hold your breath?”
“Because when you’re running, you’re allowed to keep breathing.”
We figured out my incapacity to hold any air in my lungs was
directly correlated to my incapacity to relax longer than a half second. (Picture
me underwater: I’m the guy from Accepted
who they finally get to meditate when they put him in a straight jacket.)
“Relax,” he’d tell me. Until I practiced just sitting at the
bottom of the pool and letting myself forget that I couldn’t breathe, I was
very horrible at relaxing.
It’s funny to me how often many people, upon finding out I
was taking SCUBA diving, responded so very cynically. “Oh, I would never take
that class. I’m too scared.”
The irony of their responses is that my reason for taking
SCUBA diving is exactly that. I was scared. I wanted to challenge
myself. I wanted to push myself well beyond my comfort zone. I wanted to poop
my wetsuit.
I wanted to let myself relax.
And I’ll admit, I had to go into the aqua center a couple
times outside of class to practice sitting at the bottom of the pool.
It sounds ridiculous, but I got so good, in fact, that the
lifeguards were on the edges of their seats, praying they wouldn’t have to come
in after me.
The final consisted of a written test and a pool test. And
then we had the option to head to Florida for a check out dive to get our
certification. (Well, hell yeah I’m going to take an opportunity to be excused
from my classes and go to Florida in November.)
If you had told me in August that I would be SCUBA diving
through pitch-black caves in just a couple months, I’d have called you a liar.
But there I was, kickin’ it with the manatees.
Taking SCUBA diving at OU isn’t for everyone. But everyone
should take a course that scares the skin off of them. Whether you are a macho
dude who’s taking Women’s Gender Studies or you’re an arachnophobe taking
Spider History (that’s not actually a course), everybody should be pushing
themselves beyond that box called comfortable that we like to live in.
My trip to the Caribbean was the greatest of my life. I dove
100 feet underwater to see the remnants of a shipwreck. I swam through
beautiful reefs. I got to ask rainbow fish what it was like to star in every
child’s favorite book.
I learned more about myself in SCUBA diving than any other
class I’ve ever taken in college. And I couldn’t have done it if I hadn’t let
myself get a little scared.
*This story was published in the opinion section of The Essay Magazine.
