Swimming with the fish and slipping between coral, have you ever been 18 meters below sea level? Not many people can say they have, but Sock Udovich can! Over spring break, Sock received their scuba diving certification through a two-day course. This unique accomplishment has always been a goal for Sock. They want to become a marine biologist, so they always knew they’d need this skill. It came faster than expected when Sock heard of an opportunity to take a high school marine biology course this summer with A&M Galveston. It was recommended that you have a scuba diving license for this course, so Sock quickly jumped at the opportunity! They are currently on the waiting list and are eagerly waiting to get into the program. The certification course Sock enrolled in consisted of two training days. One focused on swimming while the other focused on working with the gear. Surprisingly the hardest part didn’t have anything to do with either skill! Sock said that the pressure in their ears was the difficult part of scuba diving. When asked, they said it was the opposite of your ears popping on the plane. Instead of the pressure pushing out of your ears, there was tons of pressure pushing into your ears. Sock even described how they often wanted to jump out of the water due to the discomfort! Overall, it seems that they had a positive experience getting their certification. I wanted to ask Sock what kind of advice they’d give to anyone interested in also getting certified. The first thing they said was: “Come talk to me!” Sock seemed more than willing to discuss the process with anyone curious. They mentioned that although it seems very intimidating, you should “look at it with an open mind,” and once you got in the water, it was pretty easy! If there’s one thing we can all learn from Sock it’s to be brave and try new things. Who knows, maybe you’ll end up scuba-certified!
