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BOSA007

Discouraged by first AFF class.

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Had two tandems last month and found what I was looking for! Went to my first AFF class and my instructor was a jerk. He wasn't very patient with me and acted like he didn't even want to teach me. I thought that I was doing pretty good. I did a lot of research before hand so that I would be able to understand the terminology and the process of the jump. I watched another instructor teaching a student and they really hit it off.
After about three hours of class I went to the owner and told them I was no longer interested.
From everything I've read this was supposed to be an exciting and fun experience. Now I'm just discouraged but not ready to give up yet. Any advice would greatly be appreciated.

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Maybe he's a bad instructor who shouldn't ever teach the first jump course. Maybe he's normally a great instructor but his wife left him the night before and he was just trying to get through the day. Either way, you handled the situation correctly. Hopefully the experience won't turn you off from making your first jump. Ask the dropzone to schedule you in a class with a different instructor or go to a different dropzone.

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Hard to say. There are two sides to every story. Perhaps just caught them on a bad day. Or maybe you're a know it all student and they figure they don't have much to teach you since you already know everything.

I'd say ask for a different instructor. If the new one is better then great. If they aren't better then maybe it's you.

Sorry I don't have a good filter for feelings but that's my thoughts on it.

Also don't forget that although fun, you are there to learn and consequences for not taking what you are learning seriously can be fatal or at the very least extremely painful and permanent.

Perhaps it would be easier to understand what happened if you explained what happened instead of just saying "my instructor was a jerk" Were they short with you? uninterested, serious, condescending, what?

I very rarely have seen crappy or rude instructors last long at a DZ, Not that I am an authority. Please elaborate a bit and maybe we can help you to have a better learning experience. Either way don't let one bad experience turn you away from one of the greatest sports on the planet.
Trail mix? Oh, you mean M&M's with obstacles.

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man/woman up and just deal with an instructor that you might not like. After all you are there to skydive, not to make friends with your instructor.

My advice would be. Shut the fuck up and don't try to impress your instructor with the stuff you have learned on your own. Listen and just do as you are told. You'll be of the leash soon enough.

Also...its not a roller coaster ride. If you fuck up, you will die. Your instructors job is to teach you how to survive, not to entertain you. If you and your instructor click on a personal level, then that is a plus.

You can of course always try a different DZ and see whether you can find an instructor that you like. Id rather have a brutally honest and abrasive dick as an instructor than a nice moron.

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Freeflaw

Id rather have a brutally honest and abrasive dick as an instructor than a nice moron.



THIS ^ I learned in the military and I promise you it was not an enjoyable experience but boy did I know everything that they taught me COLD. skydiving is a fun and exciting experience, but AFF can be a very stressful time for some. I don't know to many people who enjoyed their first few AFF jumps.
Trail mix? Oh, you mean M&M's with obstacles.

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Like everyone said, its difficult to give advice when we dont know the entire story. But regardless if you dont have thick skin you may not make it in the sport.

Odds are that either before graduating AFF and/or within your first few hundred jumps youre going to make a handful of beginner mistakes. And people ARE going to confront you about it, and likely those people are not going to sugar coat shit because its not just your safety that is in trouble but everyone else in the sky.

So if this one experience of someone giving you a tone that was less than friendly is making you question skydiving I would possibly advise cutting your loses. I have been called out once or twice for stupid landed patterns etc. but I took it with a grain of salt and realized that it was to better me not to belittle me.

Just my .02

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"Attitude
Your attitude must display the highest degree of professionalism
and dedication. You must be prepared to put all of
your effort into getting the job done properly. This often
means setting your personal feelings and desires aside. A
good attitude means dealing with adversity in a positive and
cheerful manner. It also means maintaining high standards
of personal appearance and hygiene."

I had the same experience as you when starting. I pushed past it only because I didn't know better and thought that maybe I was a bad student. Although it was highly discouraging, here I am now with my own Coach rating. I promised myself that I would never treat a student like I was treated, and do my best to make sure they to get to experience the fun and excitement of skydiving, just like the rest of us, without having to deal with a shitty negative attitude that has no place in professional instruction. Good luck, I hope that you can do the same, Blue Skies!

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havoc996

***Id rather have a brutally honest and abrasive dick as an instructor than a nice moron.



THIS ^ I learned in the military and I promise you it was not an enjoyable experience but boy did I know everything that they taught me COLD. skydiving is a fun and exciting experience, but AFF can be a very stressful time for some. I don't know to many people who enjoyed their first few AFF jumps.

..............................................................................

Agreed!
If you enjoyed military jump school, you are either: A a masochist or B god's gift to the Rangers, SEALs or some group of specialized soldiers we are not allowed to talk about in public.
Hah!
Hah!

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riggerrob

******Id rather have a brutally honest and abrasive dick as an instructor than a nice moron.



THIS ^ I learned in the military and I promise you it was not an enjoyable experience but boy did I know everything that they taught me COLD. skydiving is a fun and exciting experience, but AFF can be a very stressful time for some. I don't know to many people who enjoyed their first few AFF jumps.

..............................................................................

Agreed!
If you enjoyed military jump school, you are either: A a masochist or B god's gift to the Rangers, SEALs or some group of specialized soldiers we are not allowed to talk about in public.
Hah!
Hah!

NOPE! Not even them riggerrob, I would know. ;)
Trail mix? Oh, you mean M&M's with obstacles.

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BOSA007

Had two tandems last month and found what I was looking for! Went to my first AFF class and my instructor was a jerk. He wasn't very patient with me and acted like he didn't even want to teach me. I thought that I was doing pretty good. I did a lot of research before hand so that I would be able to understand the terminology and the process of the jump. I watched another instructor teaching a student and they really hit it off.
After about three hours of class I went to the owner and told them I was no longer interested.
From everything I've read this was supposed to be an exciting and fun experience. Now I'm just discouraged but not ready to give up yet. Any advice would greatly be appreciated.



Being a student is often difficult. You must be ready.......https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRX6hSGeZs4
Instructor quote, “What's weird is that you're older than my dad!”

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BOSA007

I did a lot of research before hand so that I would be able to understand the terminology and the process of the jump.



Not saying you did, not saying you didn't, but is it possible you had a "I did some research and I already know that attitude"?

Where did you get your "research"? I have seen it, as I am sure other instructor have, you get the know-it-all student. They are the most dangerous because they don't/won't listen to what you have to share with them.


Judy
Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.

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I had a similar issue with one of the instructors when I was going through AFF. I had multiple instructors over the year I took my AFF. Yes it took me a year, money was tight! Anyway, all the instructors at the dropzone were very cool people except one. I'm not going to go into detail because he is very easily identified by those who jump at my DZ, but needless to say, he was a very bitter person when he was teaching, but outside of teaching, he was, from what I was told, a pretty decent guy. The bottom line is, I don't think he was a good fit to be a teacher. Sure, he knew the material, but so does everyone else with a D license (or they should). This guy was just a bad teacher, and had no patience. I'm telling you this because I want you to know there are others like you who have had this experience. My suggestion is to request a different instructor. Don't feel bad about it either. If they ask why, just tell them the truth (tactfully). Be honest with the staff, but don't burn a bridge with the guy. The skydiving community is very small, and you don't want your name tarnished early in the sport. I promise you, if you back out now, you will regret it later. Get a different instructor!

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Please don't be discouraged by one instructor. Despite my skydiving hobby, I think maybe the best thing I've ever done in my life is learning to scuba dive. My group had 2 instructors splitting our supervision. One was very nice, made the whole experience fun. One was not. He was the kind of guy who made people cry. I've often wondered what might have been if he was the only instructor we had. I might not have continued with it, which would have been an enormous loss, considering how much diving has added to my life.

"So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

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And don't listen to people on here trying to blame you for being a bad student. Every student and every instructor has their flaws. If you have ever taken a leadership course, or studied anything about instruction/leadership, one thing that you will learn about it is the differences of learning styles for different types of people. No student is the same, and just because one person thinks they were a great student because their learning experience was good doesn't mean they couldn't go to an otherwise perfectly good instructor and not do well with them. The point I'm trying to make is, a good instructor can teach all types of students, without letting his/her bad side through because he/she is having diffuclty with your learning style. Which is why I posted the "Attitude" section from the IRM (Instructional Rating Manual provided by USPA when you become a Coach/Instructor). A good instructor knows how to assess your learning style and adapt to that all the while keeping a good attitude and making the experience good for their student! And one more thing, if you are experiencing some type of resistance or negativity, don't be shy! Just straight up ask "what can I do to be a better student?" If a student asked me that I would say "Be humble, and respect that there is a lot in skydiving you won't know for a long time. Listen to what I say and understand that comes from experience. Listen to my instructions, and later if there is something you want to talk about we can do that! Now let's go fucking skydive!" B|

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Also I just wanna add that sometimes, the chemistry between the two just doesn't match.

I considered myself as an asshole AFFI, than again some people thought that I was one of the best and thank me afterwards.

Teaching first jump course takes a different set of mind set. I feel like most of the AFFI doesn't wanna deal with first jump course after so many of them.

When there is student's safety involved, and if AFFI doens't really give a fuck anymore, than that AFFI should stop teaching first jump course.

Just wanna add, some AFFI are way more strict vs others, I found this out and I only requested two AFFi while I was going thru the program. These two were very lenient, in terms of task that I was supposed to do. Even the turns weren't perfect or some jumps I pulled little below 6000ft but they passed me, and telling me that my turns will improve and pulling 500ft below weren't such a big deal.

Request different AFFI and see what happens. By the time you get thru 25 jumps and make new friends at the DZ, you are not even gonna associate with the guy anyways.
Bernie Sanders for President 2016

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BIGUN

Perhaps you should give us your definition of how he was being a jerk?



A few things, since I deal with a lot of customer service and interpersonal workplace issues and residency training...

Three sides to every story: yours, theirs, and the truth. That, and it is impossible to know what the exact issue was without seeing it as an observer. To you maybe he/she was a jerk, to them maybe you were "difficult". Maybe he had a bad day. Maybe you took something wrong. Maybe he was just a hardass and that is his teaching style. Maybe he is just a dick.

The reality is that instructors come in more flavours than ice cream. I was told at my FJC in no uncertain terms that if you did not like the instructor just let them know and they would hook you up with another course from someone else. It wasn't because one sucks and the others are awesome, but because personal chemistry varies.

Admittedly I liked all my instructors for my jumps sans one who I just didn't "hit it off with". He was nice, but his only advice was "your arch sucks, the rest is fine" and he went and took the next student out. I felt a little forgotten later to be told he would have said more if I had more problems but he just "fixes the issues". Not bad, but I just needed more feedback and I felt he was over busy and detached. Everyone else who had him thought it was great. Chemistry goes a long way.

So.. what do you do then? Well, you can talk to the school and ask for a different instructor if available; you can change DZs (may not be possible in all places, but in New England there are just a lot within an hour drive), or you can give up. If you let one personality turn you off of the sport then it is better now than later since there are a LOT of personalities in skydiving. Its the only place a mechanic, a politician, a celebrity, a doctor, a secretary, a firefighter, and a waitress can all rub elbows on true equal footing. You're all meat missiles hell bent on a mix of survival and excitement. But, despite that, there are opinions, there are attitudes, egos, personalities, etc. You don't have to love all of them but you do need to sometimes have thick skin.

Anyhow, don't let it get you down if you really like it. Just realize there are options just like any business.
You are not the contents of your wallet.

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