Bore post.

I survived my first weekend of the lifeguarding class. One more to go. It was better than I expected. We got there at 8am. They sequestered us into a tiny classroom, told us to go change into our swimsuits, and get ready to swim a three hundred, which is six laps--breast stroke and free style. I was a bit relieved that it was less than I expected, but I still wasn't quite prepared to swim nonstop for so long. It was so tiring and by just the second lap I wasn't sure if I would make it. I have little to no upper-body strength, so I spent my time catching my breath and kicking as hard as I could so my leg strength would get me by. Our next pretest was to tread water for two minutes without using our arms. Afterwards, the two minutes seemed like they went by pretty quickly...But it was a scary moment when our instructor said that only thirty seconds had passed when it felt like it'd been thirty minutes. In the next part of the pretest we had to swim across the pool, do a surface dive, and get a weight from the bottom of the fifteen foot diving well. A lot of people had trouble getting the brick since they couldn't see without goggles, and it hurts your ears pretty badly to swim down that deep, but we all (almost) ended up getting it. I suppose the point of all the pretest stuff is to weed out the wienies and make sure we can all decently swim. Throughout the day we watched vidoes about how to save people in different situations and different techniques for entering the water and getting victims out safely, and then we practiced all the techniques. It was all very intense and demanding. I just have to get through this upcoming weekend, and I will be able to breathe.