Who is Becca?

It's nearly 1am here in Hull, I'm sat in the kitchen alone, hearing the noises of a new home. The creaking of the floorboards, although strangely, nobody is moving. But in this almost silence, I'm very much deep in thought and it's thoughts I wanted to write down.

Throughout my entire 20 years and a few months on this earth, I have never liked my name being shortened. The line "It's not Becky, it's not Bec, it's Rebecca." Falling from my mouth in a very similar fashion and tone as my mother. But in recent months, I have accepted Becca as a more tolerable alternative. Predominantly because customers in Gran Canaria just defaulted to calling me Becca, why, I have no idea whatsoever. This began to become the running joke in my family, that when I'm in that wet suit I'm "Becca the Dive Master." It's suddenly got me thinking over the last few days, what's in a name? There's a lot more to Becca then Rebecca. People always used to ask me how I'm so confident in situations like public speaking or meeting new people, despite the anxiety problem. It is immensely easy to fake being confident, it's very easy to put on a mask and the more you do it, the more natural it becomes and the more you adopt it into your normal persona.

And that above, is the whole point of this blog post. I have adopted "Becca" as my persona. You see, when I was in that wet suit, when I was Becca, I had so much confidence, I could brief a full boat of people and be confident about it, I could conduct introduction dives and have a laugh and a joke whilst doing so, I could put people at ease when I was diving with them (Shout out to the Italian family I did a double tank dive with, you guys were fab!) I have noticed ore an more recently that I'm transferring a lot of the "Becca" traits into my "normal" life back on land. I stand a little taller, I'm a heck of a lot more confident and eloquent when putting new ideas to a group of people, I can now handle most situations, I can even make and receive phone calls to people I don't know, - level up!

By putting myself in a situation that I knew would be uncomfortable in the beginning, I have completely changed myself and my outlook on life. I like to believe that Becca is a cooler person *puts on shades* No? Okay... Anyway, but Becca is the person that 13 year old me always wanted to be, the girl with the nose ring, the slightly blondish hair that doesn't ever really fall right, the girl who is always planning her next adventure, the girl who will ever give up on her dreams.

To try and round off this blog post, and to allow you, dear reader, to take something from it. I want people who are scared of social situations, scared of doing that presentation in class next week, or maybe, like me, you get a little bit nervous when it comes to paying for you shopping at the till. To make a persona for yourself, it doesn't even have to have a name, just create that version of yourself that you want to be, to create the self-fulfilling prophecy. And soon you will be conducting that presentation or even talking to that cashier with more ease and confidence.

Until the next post, guys, be good and be safe.

Moving On

This blog post is going to be a little bit different in comparison to the ones I've done before. There won't be any lists, just me chattering away about how life has been in the last few months, why I haven't been blogging too much and my new goals and ambitions. It's been a perspective changing few months and I've had a really hard time readjusting back to normal life. This is partially why I haven't been blogging too much in the last few weeks either, I don't want to let go of the happiness I felt when I was over in Gran Canaria, I found the lifestyle for me, I found the career path for me and I didn't want to have to face the fact it's over. But this is where that famous quote comes in - "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it's happened." And I'm trying my best to keep smiling because it's happened but it's hard. I've tried to write the blog posts summarising the last few weeks that I was out there but I can never finish them. This will probably be quite a short blog post due to the fact that I just want to complete one and get it out there following such a long hiatus.

So I'm going to try now. Yes, I'm now a PADI certified Dive Master, I finally completed the stress test without killing off Ryan, or completely emptying the tank, I could conduct introductory dives for customers on my own and although there were a few teething errors in the beginning in, I was getting better and better every time. I als achieved something that I thought I never would whilst I was out there. I'm now also a Discover Scuba Diving leader.This means I can conduct the PADI Discover Scuba Diving session by myself now. In order to get this certification I had to conduct 4 DSDs under the supervision of a PADI instructor (Big applause for Sam who saw me through these!) I conducted one in the middle of the 8 weeks, although this was a apart of my Dive master internship to see if I would be interested in being a DSD leader.

To cut a long story short, my next DSD would be to the most difficult customer I would ever face and that was my own Dad (I would also like to add after I had taught my Dad on his DSD, we had the amazing opportunity to see how to teach 5 DSDs at once, thank you to Ryan and Sam for letting me part of that, it's certainly taught me a lot about logistics!). During my last week out in GC I had one hell of surprise when my parents facetime me and then pan the camera round to show me a beautiful picture of Anfi beach behind them. After crying considerably and regaining some composure I ran from patalavaca to Anfi. It was an absolutely amazing experience and I'm truly blessed to have parents as understanding as them - To such an extent they were fully prepared for me to turn around at the end of that week and say I wouldn't be going back with them,

This leads me on nicely to both my short term and long term goals. As much as it was immensely tempting to stay in Gran Canaria and become an instructor, university has to come first and it always will. So my main goal right now is to absolute smash my degree and come out with a first, then at the end of the next two years, I will be ready to go back to Scuba Sur and begin my IDC. However, there are some things I'm ding in the middle now that will keep me ticking over. I'm now a member of the Above and Below dive team here in Hull and I will soon begin assisting them with pool sessions and hopefully out on some dives too! Through them my goal by the end of this academic year and before I go back to gran Canaria for a holiday next year is to become an Assistant Instructor and hopefully get my EFR instructor done too, they're effectively the pre-requisites for becoming a PADI instructor, so I'm doing this in stages, and I really can't wait to see what the next chapter of my life brings. All I know is I've found my calling in life and I will chase it, and nobody will stop me.

My time as a DMT and in the latter stages of the 8 weeks as a DM has been the most educational and thrilling experience of my life, I cannot thank my Scuba Sur family enough for all the individual lessons you taught me. I'm going to end this blog post here for now but I'm settling back into uni life at the moment, waiting for lectures to start - I can't wait to get stuck in! Bring it all on. Until next time, dear reader, be good.