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captain1976

Have you ever turned a student away?

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I've only ever turned a student away once. I can honestly say I did my best and really gave him everything I could. He truly truly truly was NOT cut out for skydiving. I've had slow learning or problem students before, but this guy... to this day I feel speechless over this guy.

I taught an FJC with 3 students. He was one. He was so incredibly slow and confused the whole day that in the interest of the other students, I had to finish their training separate and come back to the problem student. Nothing made sense to this guy. I spent almost the entire day working with him on just the basics of understanding the equipment. After about 8 hours of taking the main canopy out and showing him all 3 handles, he still could not understand the difference between any of the three, could not identify correctly which handle did what, nor which handle to pull in malfunction situations. After 8 hours, much of which was one on one.

At the end of the day, some other instructors and I gave up and sent him on a tandem. He did awful on the tandem. He was fetal and completely rigid the entire time despite hand signals, never once looked at his altimeter nor made any effort to deploy even with prompting.

This student went on to do 3 more tandems all with similar results. But we kept trying. We tried and tried and tried. We even sent him to a wind tunnel where he did an entire hour. After that hour, the wind tunnel instructors were completely fed up with him and said he was about where he was when he first got there. The hour did absolutely nothing for him and the tunnel instructors were not very keen on having him back. I guess there is only so much fighting and flailing with an over 6ft thicker guy before you just throw in the towel with trying to teach him anything.

We still kept trying and he still kept coming back to the DZ every weekend and would hang out all day asking questions and watching people pack. After a few weeks he signed up for another AFF FJC which I taught AGAIN and had similar results to the first time. After weeks of being at the DZ and two full all day FJCs, he still could not identify the basic difference between any of the 3 handles.

Eventually I gave up and sent him for private 1 on 1 time with the DZs most experienced instructor as myself and all the other instructors just could not get anything out of him. After a few more weekends of work with the chief instructor they finally agreed to take him up for a level 1 AFF. Apparently he was completely unresponsive in freefall, made no effort to look at his altimeter ever, was JM deployed after prompting. He was completely unresponsive to the person on radio and ended up taking a downwinder barely missing a building, but walking away unhurt and trembling, pale as a ghost. At that moment he finally decided for himself that he could never be a skydiver and left.

Every instructor on the DZ gave him their best and every single one would eventually give up and turn him away. I protested him even going on that AFF jump.

This was a few years ago. He was actually a fairly educated man. I think he was either a doctor or lawyer.

Some people, just are NOT fixable no matter the instructor. Sucking in freefall is one thing, having no ability to grasp the concept between different handles or understanding even the basics of the equipment is something else.



According to jackwallace, you didn't try hard enough and you are a poor insttructor. ;)

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Well then he'd be right. I'm pretty awful.

But in my defense, then so was every other instructor at the DZ as were all the boys at the wind tunnel.

In fact, I'd even use this logic to go ahead and say that SunPath makes pretty poor student rigs. They're just too difficult for students to understand and have far too many complicated handles with far too complex procedures.

Alti-2 makes pretty poor altimeters. They're just too difficult to even find when they're on your hand and even harder to read.

PD makes poor student canopies. There are waaaay too many steering lines with far too complicated procedures for navigation.

It's truly a shame in this day and age that all these perfect students out there have to overcome the challenge of terrible and misleading equipment only to then have to face poor inferior instructors. I can't even imagine how the students of 30 years ago survived. And why aren't they instructors now?
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According to jackwallace, you didn't try hard enough and you are a poor insttructor. ;)



I would suggest that we all send the students who we are do not have the skilz to teach to Jackwallace. Sadly, I looked at his profile and as far as I can tell he has no instructional ratings. That's just sad! A guy with the skill to teach anyone walking the planet to skydive, and no rating. I'm saddened. I soooo wanted to have in my back pocket "There's a guy in Florida...."
Experience is what you get when you thought you were going to get something else.

AC DZ

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Best stories I ever read are on this thread. Kind of like a bunch of suspense stories.


Thanks all for your responses.



funny stuff, really..

just overheard one of those bowling-speeches the other day at the dz, before i've read this thread; i didnt even think that was possible, but apparently, it happens once or twice every year..

the guy i've mentioned did like his 11th tandem later on in the day.. :S
“Some may never live, but the crazy never die.”
-Hunter S. Thompson
"No. Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try."
-Yoda

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When I first started skydiving I had just gotten my coach rating and was teaching a FJC.
The dude was being a total creep and wouldn't stop hitting on me. I couldn't convey any information without a vulgar comment. This guy had pre-paid for his whole AFF course.
I went and told the owner i couldn't do the course cuz the guy wouldn't listen and wouldn't shut up about where we could go on a date that night...the owner ended up taking all the dudes cash he pre-paid out of the register and gave it back to the guy and told him to leave and never ever come back.
Knowing the owner I can't believe he let all that money go and didn't just have someone else teach the FJC. But at the same time it made me feel good that the owner actually cared about stuff like that.
Thanks Urban!


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A number of years ago we had a once-yearly visit from a group of military school cadets from Oak Ridge Military Academy in South Carolina. They would bring around 10 young people between the ages of 16 and 18 up here for a summer "adventure training" trip. Anyway, among this group was a kid who was quite-clearly mentally "slow" if I am being honest. The "real" army guy who was in charge of this group was an old friend of mine and I thought it was a joke; it was not. He sat through the entire SL FJC, but was distracted by the smallest things. He had a real fascination with this GI Joe (with parachute pack) that we had hanging on the wall and wouldn't stop asking me if he could go outside and play with it. There was NO way I was going to let this kid skydive and I told his parents (both of them were present) and his Cadre guy as much. Still, I got through with the class and pulled out the written test. Like some of the people have relayed in this thread, this guy hadn't retained a bit of the information. Case closed; failed test equalled no jump. No amount of retraining would have make this guy safe. I told the cadre guy that he needed to better screen the people he brought to skydive.

Now what pissed me off (and still does) was that he would have been just fine on a tandem. This was before the USPA wording gave us the window to do 16 year old tandems. We don't train students under 18 at RPC School anymore, but we did for over 30 years.

Speaking of the Oak Ridge Military Academy groups though: Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his sister both got stuck in military school for a while when they were kids and both of them came here to Raeford and did SL jumps with that group a few years prior.

Chuck

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30 years ago had a guy that was 'questionable' at times, took a little extra to get him to competent & confident.



...I dunno, if he keeps at it, guess he'll make it one of these days!





He's the vidiot for Airspeed:ph34r:;)B|











~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

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I'm seeing a couple of types of posts about students who just couldn't make it, or instructors who made that decision. And, you know -- there really seem to be two ways of looking at it.

Some folks seem to think that turning a student away is a success, and a validation of their judgment. Others look at it as a failure in their ability to instruct. It's necessary sometimes, but I think I'd fall on the "failure to instruct" side.

Not that everyone should be able to jump. But the instructor shouldn't be proud of turning someone away.

Wendy P.
There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

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after following this one for quite some time, i'll give it a shot

some seven or eight years ago (don't remeber exactly, but not so long after i got my licence) this chap turns up at our club. past 60, just lost his wife and wanted to fulfill his lifelong dream: skydiving.
back the i didn't have any instructional rating, but what I somehow noticed was, that he was slow. not unintelligent at all, but slow. and a little bit stubborn to. I guess that comes with age. addidtional hindeances were problems with his shoulde and back - guess you know what that does or arching B| - so off to tandem progression. i don't know how many tandems he made, but somewhere in this process he managed to hurt himsef whlle ground training. took him another year to come back...

to make a long story short - he was no natural and gave instructors more than a hard time an gray hair. tunnel didn't help much - tunnel instructors said that they never ever wanted to be in the air with him for being unresponsive etc. in real life it wasn't much better
but each year he came back for the next ultra small steps. quite a case of being determined, when our club finally gave up he moved to the next dz where instructors just rode him down many times and finally he made a foreign license - after more than 100 jumps.
in spring he came with us to the bedford tunnel - and big surprise - he flew alone - something I would never have imagined being possible.

would I have turned him away? You bet! nonetheless he's jumping. granted: he'll never be on more than a two way with a coach - but what would you want, if you'd turn 70 in the near future???


just my story/0,2's

The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle

dudeist skydiver # 666

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You know, the fact that that guy in your story finally got his license after many, many tries doesn't mean that he eventually learned to be a safe skydiver. Not everyone is a "success-after-much-failure" story like Wendy Faulkner tells about herself (and props to her). But Wendy was younger and healthier than that guy when she turned her training journey into a success story.

Frankly, I'd say that the guy in your story, and the sport of skydiving, would be better off without him having a skydiving license; which of course means he might now potentially travel to some other DZ and skydive self-supervised. The thought of that gives me the willies.

We all know people who fail their driving test about 3 times and then finally manage to get a license, and go on to be a menace to themselves and everyone on the road. I know a couple of horrendously incompetent lawyers who failed the bar exam 3 or 4 times before finally (unfortunately) passing.

Some incompetent skydivers, perhaps more heavily weighted toward the older ones (which I don't say lightly, being over 50 myself), simply have no business with skydiving licenses. I might not feel so strongly about that were it not for the fact that, back in The Day, a fellow student back at my first DZ went in partly because he was being jumpmastered by an older, not very competent guy (who somehow managed not to kill himself long enough to get a C license, and had no business jumpmastering students) who failed to give my friend a proper gear check that would have uncovered the serious (and ultimately fatal) packing mistake the kid made. I guess it made a lasting impression on me.

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Anyway, among this group was a kid who was quite-clearly mentally "slow" if I am being honest. The "real" army guy who was in charge of this group was an old friend of mine and I thought it was a joke; it was not. He sat through the entire SL FJC, but was distracted by the smallest things. He had a real fascination with this GI Joe (with parachute pack) that we had hanging on the wall and wouldn't stop asking me if he could go outside and play with it.
Chuck



Sounds like me at that age, some people just grow up sooner or later than others.
No doubt he didn't belong in the air then, but either did I and God forbid there was a malfunction or emergency of any kind, I wouldn't be here :)
You live more in the few minutes of skydiving than many people live in their lifetime

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Not that everyone should be able to jump. But the instructor shouldn't be proud of turning someone away.

Wendy P.



I don't know that an instructor should be strutting around like the cat that got the canary when s/he sends someone packing. But I think it's OK to feel that you did the right thing.

There are so many forces an instructor needs to overcome to make such a decision: the DZO pushing for the $$$, the student who wants so badly to jump, and (yes) the instructor's own pride and desire to feel good and feel that they can "handle any student."

I don't think there's anything wrong with an instructor feeling good that they did what they felt was the right thing in the face of significant pressure to "give the guy a chance" or "another chance" depending on the situation.

The little voice in my head is wrong 99% of the time. But the 1% of the time that it IS right makes up for the other 99%.

Elvisio "except when it tells me to play with matches" Rodriguez

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I do not believe in the bowling speech, as it is normally just an instructor cop out, but there is a time and place for everything, even a speech I don't believe in. ***

normally I believe this, however I was present on two occasions that Livendive wrote about if you go back to the first or second page, the first he took the guy out and the student did fantastic till the bottom end of the dive then went bugfuck - ass over teakettle - he did however pull his main, which ended up with him wrapped with lines... his RSL saved his life... but... it took its time in doing so... i was on the ground watching, it was a sunset dive, I remember saying boy, they are getting all the dive time they can... ok, there goes the student as I watched what I thought was a student deployment.....HOLY FUCK THATS DAVE!!! as the student plummeted lower... he chased the student to 2k...actually I believe he went quite a bit lower in an attempt to save him before saving himself...

the second was boy wonder... a nice guy, dont get me wrong, but damn he thought he knew everything... during a break in the first jump course I came back to find him there teaching the students... I dont believe in embarrassing someone in front of others but I lost it there... The staff had misgivings about him and his abilities but we figured we just hadnt "clicked" just yet, so we continued working with him till I put him out on a 10 second delay and watched him fall out of sight from 5.5k - I regularly got bitched out for putting students out higher (usually 500-1000') than the dz norm, I figure altitude is cheaper than the paperwork needed after an accident.. he had a slow right turn, but was otherwise stable, I watched him till i lost sight of him) he pulled at the same time his cypress fired... his excuse was he had a radical spin and couldnt find his handles...nowhere did he say " I fucked up" making mistakes happens... if you live through them and learn from them ok, but if you make mistakes and its not "your fault" then your a dumbass and you need to take up golf (tug) he got the speech from the dzo who was very shaken up - and within I belive 3 weeks he bounced and got a lifeflight from the competition dz who we had contacted about him...


Roy
They say I suffer from insanity.... But I actually enjoy it.

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Not that everyone should be able to jump. But the instructor shouldn't be proud of turning someone away.

Wendy P.



I see a couple of ways of looking at that, one being your view. The other being that turning someone away could and in many cases has saved that person's life. I've seen student's jump who in hindsight had no business going, the jump resulting in an ambulance ride. In hindsight it would have been a much better decision to have "turned someone away."
Experience is what you get when you thought you were going to get something else.

AC DZ

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Yeah, i see that all the time,,whats with all the cell phone crap ? You figure if you show up to learn to skydive you could at least leave your cell in the car till the end of the day,,,,these people are on the phone like they are talking to the White House !:S
Looks like a damn "can you hear me now " commercial. This bother anyone else ?

smile, be nice, enjoy life
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