Out of Her Mind -- Musings on Education and Life

" You have to admit it's pretty impressive that a toy that can't connect to Wi-Fi, doesn't have Bluetooth capabilities - heck, doesn't even have batteries - continues to be iconic and have relevance today, especially when children are increasingly putting down toys and picking up video game controllers" ( Tech Times, July 10, 2015 ). Skydiving Chicken The Etch-A-Sketch has captured my imagination for as long as I can remember having one (an imagination, that is), and upon reflection, I can attribute my ability to live an imaginative life in a square world, a world restricted much like this "vintage" red toy, requiring creativity to problem solve and create beauty in a world ruled by the linear, the geometric, right turns and left turns only, to this toy.  I quickly learned that if I turned both knobs at the same time, I could get some pretty amazing results, like my "Skydiving Chicken."  Before you judge, just know that my skills...

Lessons from Skydiving:  Make Your Sixty Seconds Count Procrastination.  We all do it.  But not while skydiving, although I do know a couple of people who have slightly procrastinated pulling.  Yes, I procrastinate sometimes when it actually comes to jumping--the fear factor, the feeling that everything else in my life needs to be in order before I actually jump. But when I am in freefall, every second matters.  Every second is individual, fleeting, yet somehow slowed at the same time.  I have sixty seconds to learn as much as possible about flying my body.  Sixty seconds to adjust my fall rate, take docks, break, redock, and then track away before deploying, and soon, I am sure I will be filling my sixty seconds with other complex, fun tasks. When I find myself wasting time, I set a timer and a goal--to see how much I can get done in sixty seconds.  Because that is all I have on any given skydive before my parachute opens and I shift f...

Today's lesson from skydiving: Study Like Your Life Depends on It! My marked-up SIM It may very well depend on it one day (your life, that is, may depend on what you have studied).  How do you think MacGyver was always implementing just-in-time solutions to get out of jams? How I "Study" for Skydiving When I prepare for a jump as an AFF student, I: Read the SIM to be sure that I understand the learning objectives for that category, as well as to be sure that I am aware of the dive flow and the canopy dive flow. Reread the SIM for that category, highlighting important parts of the text. Take notes from the highlighted material, rewriting the information on notecards. Study the notes I have taken on these notecards, highlighting the most important information on them. Mentally rehearse the entire jump from door to ground several times a day. Physically rehearse the entire jump as much as possible: practicing in the mock up of the door, rehearsing c...

Oh No!  My Altimeter is Broken: Tales from a Crazy Skydiving Student Jump C-2, for the second time.  Jump 7.  It had been nearly two months since I had last jumped due to weather.  This time I was with Andy.  I was excited to fly with Andy.  He was a newly minted AFF instructor, and he had done my ground school and talked me down on radio, so I trusted him. This jump was uneventful except for the fact that I had a few more nerves than usual, given the long break between jumps.  Thankfully, I got to the dz early, stalked the wind board, reviewed the SIM, and got a great refresher from Andy before gearing up and getting on the plane. This time, I was waving off and pulling lower than ever before, at 5,000 feet.  I was nervous to deploy at such a low altitude (I know!  I know!  It's really NOT low).  I spent my time on the ride up to altitude reviewing the dive flow with Andy and noting specific altitudes--my decision altitude, ...

It was my Cat B jump.  I felt less nervous and more relaxed in freefall.  I had this skydiving thing down--jump out of the plane, do some practice handle touches, fall stable and belly to earth, practice turning.  Lock on, wave off, pull.  And although I looked the wrong way when I turned and my turns were muted because I had two instructors hanging off of me, freefall went well, and I passed. And then the canopy opened.  I looked up, happy to see a square and stable canopy and no malfunctions, although there were some line twists I had to kick out of first. And then my radio squawked.  I was instructed to do a controllability check, which I did after unstowing the toggles and flaring.  I pulled left to turn left and pulled right to turn right, making sure that I was looking when I turned to avoid canopy collisions. My radio squawked again.  "Bobbi, go to your holding area." I looked down and around me but I literally could see n...