Dude... if you're gonna talk about skydiving, don't use a management topic... go with aviation. Don't ask me what, just go with that. It's at more, um, interesting, than the other :-)
I failed IAF lvl 5, 3 times. I know it doesn't help with your question directly, but you sound a bit frustrated, so don't be. It'll come, and when it does, it's like "duh! that's it!"
I second that. One day, before boarding the plane, I told myself I was going to MAKE myself think about crap from life while in freefall. Well, on the ride up, with the stuff that happens (we all know what that is)... I completely forgot and I remembered when I had landed.
I had to repeat my IAF lvl 5... 3 times. Yes, it sucks, mostly because of the money. Nothing wrong with repeating levels though.
On a side note, I wish the price for repeating levels would be less though...
What upsets me is that they do the whole "mach 1" crap. Mach 1 at 40,000 feet is NOT the same as mach 1 at 1,000 feet. When Kittinger made the balloon jump back in 1960, it was said he broke the sound barrier, but he never really did.