dressing for tech diving? (was in What the Heck is DIR?)

[Freedive WI]

Your both correct!

There's one local "tech instructor" that comes out on the charter boat I work on and needs more help getting into his gear than his students do. Some of the captains used to draw straws to see who had to take him out since they knew it was going to be a long day when he and his students got on the boat.

Another example came from some tech diving courses I took a few years back. After decades of diving, many of which were spent on deep air, I decided to switch to trimix to be safer. I had to jump through a bunch of hoops with another local tech instructor before I could take the trimix course that I wanted.
Many a dive was started by me dressing the instructor, and their divemaster, into their suits. I would then carry all of their stage bottles down to the water, along with their masks and fins. In the meantime I would put my own gear on, go down to the water and strap on my stages, plus still have time to fiddle with my camera setup that I dragged on all of my dives, while they were still up by the truck! One time the instructor even started screaming at me because I was rushing them! I did everything I could to get them ready and was supposed to be the one taking the course!

Needless to say after a couple of incidents, like the divemaster running out of gas on a simple 170' dive, I found a new tech instructor to finish up my mix training with.

I firmly believe that you should be able to put all of your own gear on for whatever level of instruction you are teaching. If you can't dress yourself, what good are you to your students??

Jon