I’ve had the nice experience of teaching my younger brother chess and as he made those bad blunders I started to remember when I played the same and made me happy. We like to review his games together and have a laugh at the shit moves and crack jokes like “killing a fly with a bazooka”.
So I would like to know what you guys enjoyed re-living and teaching.
In my skydiving days I loved to take jumpers just off student status and help them become full fledged skydivers.
The student progression will teach you the basics of how to save your life, but that’s about it. If someone stuck with me, they could pack, spot, accurately land, and turn points in 4-way and even dive on larger formations in a much shorter time than they could do it on their own or with someone else and do it safely. I also knew who were the good teachers on the DZ and direct my students to the person that could help them most, when my skill set wasn’t appropriate.
Most of the time I just did it for the cost of my jump ticket too. Although I got in trouble with the Drop Zone Owner as he was trying to generate revenue from coaching. So I did have to start working for the DZ officially when doing coach jumps. Annoying but it was what it was. There might have been a few or many fun jumps I did with someone where I accidentally gave them a few tip and tricks and they might have bought me a beer after the planes were tied down.
I always had an interest in understanding humans, I find the way their minds work endlessly fascinating.
So I did a lot of study on the subject until one day I parked my old job and trained as a therapist.
After that I got invited to stay on at the college and teach. Been doing that for eight years now, alongside my practice, and I love it.
I spend my days answering questions from people who want to learn, who have chosen to be there and whose goal is to make a difference in the world.
It’s a privilege and a good way to earn a living.
Did you need to take a degree to become a therapist?
That’s one option.
In the UK there’s also a more vocational route, part time study, mixed with practice and focused on doing the job rather than learning about the job.
I’ve been skateboarding since '85 and snowboarding since about '90.
Now that I’m old and broken, I love nothing more than a mellow day at the park teaching people new tricks or helping them improve the ones they know.
My bag of tricks gets smaller with age, but seeing someone land a trick for the first time never gets old.
That sounds really satisfying, good on you for encouraging the kids to have fun
You sound pretty cool, kudos!
I bet teaching/seeing people get ollies and kickflips are very emotional in a positive sense, and opens a world of possibilities for the learner.
I’ve gotten really far as a fire performer, to the point where I sit on a nonprofit board as a safety expert and teach others. But we all start somewhere. I still remember getting horrible burns from a badly built contact staff with exposed metal as a newbie.
I love teaching it. I love seeing the next generation of performers come forth
Fire dancing is so cool!
I can’t imagine getting badly burned and then going back for more, lol
I juggle a bit, and have considered fucking around with a contact staff. Any tips?
If you’re US based, get a Dark Monk practice staff. They only run around $80 but work great for practicing. Nimbus grip sucks if you sweat or live somewhere humid, I recommend Om instead, and get different color endcaps so you can follow which end is which. Outside the US, the tariffs + shipping will double the price of everything.
For actual moves and such, there’s a million tutorials on YouTube. Start with figure 8s, then move on to halos, conveyors, steves, and angels. Once you can get those all clean you can move on to intermediate things.
Don’t get into fire without professional fire safety training. You want to get comfortable with your prop before you light it anyway.
Sweet, thanks dude!!
This one is going to sound goofy compared to most other responses here, but playing Overwatch. I’ve been playing solo for most of the game’s existence, with my friends occasionally popping in for a few games but it was never more than unranked casual fun.
Lately, though, I’ve managed to pull together a somewhat consistent group of friend to play ranked and recently we’ve started doing replay reviews as a way to improve our decision making.
While I’m also learning a lot from this myself, I obviously have a lot more experience playing the game than my friends and it’s been really fun teaching them things I’ve learned over the years.
I started rock climbing around 2011, and began teaching others maybe a year or two after that. I still love teaching just as much as actually going climbing, and it is kind of annoying sometimes how the two conflict. But it’s always super rewarding to watch someone break new ground - their first toprope, their first lead, their first lead on gear, their first time seeing systematic training work…
I’m always super safety conscious when I teach people systems, and I really harp on the important things, having people practice them again and again on the ground before they go up, and then again and again on toprope or with supervision or on easy routes. And then the most rewarding part for me is when I get to tell them “Okay, you know the systems, you know how to keep yourself safe. Now it’s time to flip the switch and fucking go for it.” Watching a new climber push through their fear and go to their limit is probably the most inspiring thing I see on a regular basis.
I started playing Minecraft during infdev, and now I’m teaching my little cousin how to play. I’m building a base for him and showing off all the features I thought were cool when I was first playing. It’s been a lot of fun getting back into the mind of the kid
most computer skills.
