Out of Her Mind -- Musings on Education and Life

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...

Preparing to land The first time I jumped this canopy, I was distracted by the sheer beauty of the sun streaming through the brightly colored cells. It used to be that as soon as my parachute opened, my brain would freeze in terror as I hung helplessly  four or five thousand feet above the earth, looking down at where I needed to land, praying to somehow magically end up where I needed to be at the right altitudes. These days, I squeal in delight when the slider comes down and my fall rate slows from 120 mph to a gentle glide as free fall transitions to canopy time.  I collapse my slider, do canopy control checks, clear my airspace (not necessarily in that order), and then fly my baby, my trusty, reliable parachute, pushing its limits, learning the controls, finding the sweet spot, playing in the wind.... And now, I am gaining the ability to take in more of the beauty and solitude of these eagle-eye views, truly being present in those adrenaline soaked, spectacular ...

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...

Success! Where will you take life?  We take life beyond “normal” limits, sky high, sky life.  The sky is NOT our limit for we have NO limit.  You have NO limits, except for those that you allow to exist.  Remove your mental obstacles.  Train your mind and your body.  Push to be your best you —one more lap, one more mile, one more rep.  Through the doubts and fear, we train.              We are all capable of what we can imagine—what we can imagine, we can do.  We let our imaginations soar .  Where will yours take you?  It’s true, life happens.  Don’t let it happen to you.  Stop saying, “I can’t imagine,” and start saying, “I can.”  Or better yet, visualize.  Visualize success.  We do before each and every jump.  Stop visualizing defeat.              We train to ...

My ribs after their rough encounter with the side of the tunnel I recently went to the wind tunnel in Raeford, North Carolina to perfect (ha!) my skydiving skills.  In classic Bobbi style, I not only do not arrive the proscribed thirty minutes early, I am over an hour late for my booked ten minutes, ten minutes I have been informed will be used by someone, not me, although I will be the one paying, if I'm not there, STAT!  So I run in, late and flustered, and get debriefed on the way in to the tunnel.  I struggle with my ear plugs as I shrug on my jumpsuit and then put my helmet on, yes, backwards at first as always.  Knee pads are in place and I have no idea what Greg is trying to tell me, something about crossing my arms, falling in, and grabbing the net once I get inside. Thank God I begin to doubt my ability to comprehend Greg's charades, and I ask him to clarify about grabbing the net.  Apparently, I am NOT supposed to grab it; he smacks my hands as ...

"Death Will Find You" Bridge Death will find you. The question is, where? Hiding in your bed at 9 p.m., cholesterol free?   In a flaming, mangled car at 3 am when you grew tired and drifted left of center?   Or perhaps in the claws of an angry bear on the Blue Ridge Parkway?   Tumbling down the 100-foot rock face you’re repelling down when your equipment fails, or more likely, you fail at using your equipment properly?   Under water, where you’re trapped when your kayak hits a streamer in unexpected white rapids for which you are too inexperienced?   In your bathtub, water hot, tears steaming, a bottle of wine and a bottle of pills…Or a rush of hard ground? Wherever death finds us, it is sure to do so.   I choose to live my life in the here and now, day by day, sometimes hour by hour, rather than either trying to hide from death or passively waiting for it.   Do I seek death?   Absolutely not.   Do I fear it? Less and less since child...