Today is kind of a blur of everything that happened, so between that and not getting much sleep this week and having really achy muscles, I'll try and cover everything. The main things I learned today were escapes which, pretty obviously, are when you need to escape from a drowning victim who is trying to take you down with them. The forward escape (facing the victim) is pretty easy, because if unable to use the proper technique, it's easier to kick someone to get them off of you. The escape in which the victim is trying (well, not really trying, since they're just doing everything they can to stay afloat) to drown you when you have your back to them. Doing this maneuver with a guy who is a lifeguard and has strong arms and has to weigh twice as much as you is NOT the most fun you will ever have, I promise you. The first time I attempted to escape, I was able to get my head above water, but he grabbed me again and pulled me back underwater when I was halfway through a breath, so I inhaled a good amount of water, but was able to escape for good about five seconds afterward (I feel like it was five seconds, but you honestly have no concept of time when you're essentially being drowned.)

The only other skill I learned was a zero entry backboard, where you backboard someone from extremely shallow (think less than one foot) of water. This is surprisingly just as difficult as the other two types of backboarding because turning someone on their side and then rolling them back on their back onto the backboard is extremely difficult when gravity is working against you, you have to keep their spine stabilized, AND have to keep their face out of the water.

A lot of the day was spent practicing all the skills we learned--compact jumps, surface dives, run and swim entries, submerged victim rescues, active victim rescues, you name it. This was after swimming 200 meters freestyle and 200 meters sidestroke, which is really awesome when it's less than 24 hours after you first learn the proper technique (I hope you all picked up on the sarcasm.)

We had a lunch break (Firehouse Subs, yum!) and Clay County EMTs came to tell us about what they generally expect from lifeguards and what they want to happen when they come to take over. This was extremely informative, and knowing that the EMTs are (almost) always up for jumping in the water to help when needed (and when given permission to, depending on county and even state) is very comforting, especially when they're much more qualified than me as a lifeguard (I train for a week, they train for months.)

After this, we were supposed to go back into the pool, but a thunderstorm started rolling in, so everybody put chairs and tables away and grabbed everything and headed over to the main house where we practiced CPR and took the written CPR/First Aid, Lifeguarding, and Waterfront written exams. Thankfully, I passed all three. After dinner, we discussed the different aspects of waterfront guarding, something we hadn't gone over as much as pool guarding, which is great because my camp has two lakes and no pool.

At a little before 8:30, we were free to go, and I don't have to report back to the pool until 9:30, thank goodness. I'm pretty sure a 13 hour break is the longest one I've had since Monday! I'm going to end this post here so I can use this extra time to catch up on some sleep, hopefully!

Oh, I almost forgot, on the way to the parking lot, I saw this cute little deer! The picture isn't very good, but it's better than nothing!

Lifeguarding is too exhausting for this to be a real post

I'm keeping this extremely short because I'm so so so tired. I got to the pool at 11 AM and didn't leave training until 12 AM. If you need help with that math, I was training for 13 hours, with 30 minutes for lunch and 30 minutes for dinner. I am so sunburnt on my back and face in spite of the fact that I apply sunscreen (SPF 100!) at least four times a day. The only real skill I learned was how to backboard a victim with a potential head, neck, or spine injury in deep water, which is exhausting when you have to hold a board with another person who is all dead weight up on your chest (while holding their head completely stable) for 5 minutes ideally, but realistically since we're all lifeguards in training closer to 10. There was a 200 meter relay and then a relay race in which everyone only had to swim 25 meters.

A thunderstorm rolled in at around 6 PM, so everyone got out of the pool and to shelter to learn about first aid. At about 9 or 10 we started out CPR training, which takes a lot of work (I now understand why people get so tired they have to quit), but I picked up on it pretty fast. I finally left at 12 AM, got home, took a shower, and am definitely going to bed soon after I post this.

No pictures today, but the instructors goal is to have everyone certified by tomorrow, so maybe (hopefully!) some exciting certification pictures!

I'm going to keep this post short because I am exhausted! Today I had my second day of lifeguarding, where I learned how to rescue a distressed swimmer, which was probably one of the easiest things I learned in the course. Afterward, everyone in the class had the opportunity to take turns pairing up as lifeguards guarding part of the pool while everyone else in the group simulated a busy pool day, with one or two (or three!) people drowning the way the instructor told them secretly before getting in the water. I was the last person to go, so my instructor was really branching out while coming up with ideas. I got pushed into the pool by a "child patron" and had to continue scanning the pool while I was falling and recovering! As if that wasn't enough, as soon as I made it above water and scanned to the right of me, there were two people simulating a situation in which a child is sinking a parent, so I had to rescue them both at the same time (since the other lifeguard I was working with was saving a submerged drowning person on his side of the pool...so I'm pretty prepared for any situation.) I successfully "rescued" them and got told I did it "perfect!" which was especially awesome considering we hadn't yet discussed how to do that and the only way I knew what to do was because of last night's reading. After that, we had to swim two and a half laps, rescue a submerged victim in the deep end and then swim them all the way back to the shallow end. As if that wasn't enough, right afterward we had to swim 500 meters! In my post yesterday, I was talking about how hard swimming the 1000 meters was, well, even though this was half the distance, I was so tired from just swimming 150 meters (25 of which with a person who was totally dead-weight) that I would take swimming 1000 meters over that any day!

I got a pretty decent half hour break after that and got this from my instructor:

I feel like an official lifeguard after receiving my whistle. Anyway, after that, the class learned how to rescue someone with a rescue board (which is pretty much a surfboard), which took a LOT of effort since you have to flip it over twice while holding onto a person onto it....then comes making sure their entire body is on the board without flipping it. It was really difficult since the instructor I tested it on was simulating being non-conscious.

After that came the second hardest technique of the class...learning how to rescue a victim who may have a head, neck, or spine injury from the shallow end of the pool. After a lot of practice, I finally mastered it! Most of the time I didn't keep my feet on the bottom of the pool, but instead let them float under me, so I feel like rescuing the same kind of drowner in the deep end of the pool will be easier for me than it will be for people who utilized the bottom.

After that came an hour and a half break, which included spaghetti dinner in the unit house, then CPR certification began. Unfortunately, I had to leave half an hour into that instruction to submit a homework assignment for an online class, so I have to be to the pool by 11 tomorrow morning in order to make it up the best I can. I did stay long enough into the CPR training to get this though....

 

Of course I had to monogram it! TSM. This was a fun way of making sure everyone knows it's mine when it's outside of my lifeguard pouch without writing my actual name on it (all employees have camp names so campers don't know our real names.)

Well, that's about it for now, off to read about everything about breathing and CPR in the lifeguarding manual before I fall asleep!

Specialty Training So Far

Day One:

I started all my specialty trainings on Saturday, the morning was spent canoeing and the afternoon was spent on archery. As someone who has canoed on many occasions, even canoeing up the Itchetucknee in a solo canoe, I expected this to be a pretty simple class. WRONG. The beginning of the class was spent learning the different strokes you have to do depending on whether you're seated in the bow or the stern (front or back), and when there was a stroke more complicated than the regular forward motion one or a forwards or reverse sweep, I was LOST. Although, you might be surprised to learn that wasn't the most difficult part at all. Nope, the most difficult part was having to jump out of the canoe, into the lake, and having to rock the canoe back and forth with your partner so you could climb back into it. This sounds easy, right? Nope! It was literally the most physically exhausting thing I have ever done in my life (and I've run 5Ks). After four tries, I finally was able to make it in (totally prepared to puke, I'll add, so don't be too impressed) but not unscathed...

The nice top bruise is on the inside of my upper arm and the shiner on the bottom is on the inside of my right thigh...really attractive, right? Later we practiced reflipping and emptying a tipped canoe without flipping out own, which was difficult, but definitely not as challenging as the task before!

After Canoeing was over for the day, there was an hour and a half lunch break and then Archery! This course was much less strenuous than Canoeing was, and in my opinion a lot more fun. I now know most of the parts of the bow (recurve and compact) and arrow. I can restring a bow, which was definitely the hardest part, especially when you feel like you're going to break the bow from all of the tugging. After that, I learned the proper posture and technique for shooting a bow and arrow and how to teach younger people especially the process and safety precautions involved (don't go collect your bows until the range has been declared "cold", don't start shooting until you're allowed to, etc.) As it turns out, I shot the best when using a left handed bow (I'm right handed and right eyed) some weird way--I hit the target less than 1/10th of a centimeter outside of the bullseye! I wasn't too bad using the correct/right handed bow, I hit the target almost every time. After taking and passing a written exam, I got this:

If you don't know what that means, I am now a certified archery instructor and can teach you the basics of shooting a bow an arrow for the next three years, which I feel is a pretty cool skill to have right now since The Hunger Games has exploded in popularity since the movie release a couple of months ago. Watch out, Katniss Everdeen, I'm certified now!

Day Two:

Since Archery training got done a day early, the only training I had was the last day of Canoeing in the morning. Class was just taking a canoe trip up the Black Creek. I sat in the bow (the front) the entire trip, so needless to say, my arms and shoulders and back were killing me when we got done! For those of you who don't know, the person in the back of the canoe is responsible for steering and the person in the front (in this case, me) is the "powerhouse." It was definitely a workout. I got home, showered, and took a nap on the couch and pretty much didn't move for hours. It was great.

Oh, if you didn't know, you don't realize how starving you are after an intensive workout, I guess you could say, until you're finished and start eating. Then you can't stop. I kid you not, I ate two pizza lunchables and two snack-pack cookies. Then a couple hours later, I ate two more slices of pizza and while I wasn't still hungry, I definitely could have eaten for probably an hour and put Takeru Kobayashi to shame.

To be clear, I still have no idea if I got canoe certified. The instructor didn't tell us, but then I got a mass email from my boss that said everyone did great, so I'm assuming I did, but I'm not too sure, so I just plan on staying away from canoes for a while because I pretty much got my fill of them this weekend.

Day Three:

Today, I started lifeguard training. I mentioned earlier that climbing into that canoe was the most physically exhausting thing I've ever done in my life. Well, I think everything I did today in lifeguarding just completely outdid that. Let's start with the pretest, shall we?

First, I had to swim 1000 meters. You don't even realize how far 1000 meters is until you have to swim it. I watch Michael Phelps swim in the Olympics every four years and he can probably swim that in a minute and a half, so I thought it'd be maybe 5 or 10 minutes for me to do. Definitely not the case because, in case you missed it, Michael Phelps is not human. 1000 meters in the pool is 20 laps/40 lengths. By lap 3, I felt like I was going to die, but somehow, I will never know how, I was able to finish it (with three people behind me!) in probably about 20 or 30 minutes. I honestly have no idea how accurate I am because when I got out of the pool with my jello legs (did anyone know your legs can be jello and stiff at the same time? Because I didn't.) I was just concerned with getting my water bottle without falling over, let alone looking at the clock.

As if that wasn't enough, five minutes later I was back in the pool to do the brick retrieval test. If the title I just came up with isn't clear enough for you, let me explain: for this test, I had to swim 25 meters from the shallow end of the pool to the deep end, dive 7 feet down, grab a 10 pound brick from the bottom, bring it up onto my chest and swim back on my back only using my legs...in one minute and fifty seconds. Yes, you read that right: 1 minute, 50 seconds. I was the most concerned about this test, but somehow I completed it with 40 seconds to spare. Let me tell you though, the second I tried lifting that brick, I was like, "How will this be possible? This is NOT ten pounds!!" But I ended up finishing it, thank goodness.

The next test was swimming to the deep end from the shallow end and picking up three tiny ring/hoops from the bottom of the pool and getting out of the pool in one minute. Of course since this is the test I thought I'd do the best on, I completely bombed it. The first attempt I got water in my nose and couldn't complete it. So I had to go back and do it again, this time the instructor accidentally threw the third ring too far, so I had to redo it (I was so confused as to why I couldn't find it!) By the third go around, I was just exhausted and frustrated that I hadn't finished it already, so I got to the deep end (again) and got the hoops one by one, coming up for breath after each one, which you aren't supposed to do, but it was totally necessary. I got told that I passed, but the fact that I'm blind and buoyant was my problem. The last test was treading water for five minutes, which was a piece of cake.

After all that, we all got our manuals and these totally cool fanny packs!

I learned the proper way to tread water, enter the pool depending on the situation and where the victim is in the pool (I did great at those, than goodness), and how to rescue someone based on how they're drowning. That was exhausting! I basically rescued 8-9 people in the pool today, it was really challenging, especially when the instructor I had to rescue over half the time turned "drowning" into an artform. Once you grabbed him and got him on the lifeguard float, he would take off in the other direction and you'd have to rescue him again, meaning I probably actually did closer to 20 rescues today. Which definitely explains why I'm so tired right now! 

Well, that sums up the last three days, sorry for this being so long, but since I'm all caught up they should be about the third of this length from now on, depending on how exciting or boring my days are.

Well, off to work on my lifeguarding homework--I have to read two chapters and come up with two questions about the reading for each chapter. Tomorrow's going to be mostly in the pool, so hopefully that'll go well!

I think I'll try something new this summer....

That's what I said to myself a couple of months ago during my spring break. "How about I find a job for the first time ever?" Well, it wouldn't be my first job ever, I've been a babysitter for a few families before, but I don't know how much "work" is really involved in that. So I decided that I'd step it up and find a real tax-paying job....as a summer camp counselor for a camp I camped at when I was younger. I applied, interviewed and lo and behold, got a job as a "Unit Assistant", pretty much a glorified babysitter, according to my list of duties and responsibilities.

I was extremely excited about this new opportunity until I actually went to the camp (which is on the edge of the Ocala National Forest, if that tells you anything) for the first time in years for Open House. I seem to have forgotten how hot and muggy this camp is (and this is coming from someone who's lived in Florida her whole life!), especially with no air conditioning that I was able to find. And better yet--no cell phone service! This will CERTAINLY be an adventure...but thankfully I was able to rope my sorority big sister into working there this summer too.

Right now I'm in Orange Park (right outside of Jacksonville) for "specialty training" for camp, which I'll post about later, but right now I'm on my way out the door to start lifeguard training...from 1-8 today! Seven hours in the hot sun and pool...bring it on!