New Zealand Ski Instructor Course - Exam Week Diary

It was a big week for our NONSTOP New Zealand crew, with NZSIA Level 1 exams finally arriving...

MONDAY - EXAM WEEK

Waking up Monday morning, tensions were high for the upcoming exam. In anticipation of this Jason had set aside this day for a while to be based around having a fun day out skiing, with a quick demo turn shoot to keep it real.

Following dinner in the evening, we headed off to the Springfield school to meet the examiners and the other participants of the exam; many of which were Porter's staff and already known to the crew.

TUESDAY - DAY ONE OF EXAM

Strangely enough, down at breakfast you could not tell that there would be an exam that day. Everyone seemed quite relaxed and comfortable with the fact that they had been preparing for this for well over a month. Up at the ski field we broke off into our respective groups. The groups being Jack, James, Zoe and Mike with the examiner Ben; and Jamie and Andrew with the examiner Mark. In total there were 9 students in each group.

Both examiners decided to assess our personal skiing straight away by bringing us up to the top of T-Bar 1 and giving us two warm-up laps. Before martialling us together again at the top and splitting us back into our groups.

Marks group started off by getting to know each other by asking a series of questions to try and ease the tension. Questions such as; Most embarrassing moment, first cars and then repeating everyone's name in a circle.

After getting to know the members in each group, the exam began for real. It was good weather that day, and looked bad for the rest of the week so the examiners took the opportunity to work on our personal skiing, helping us to reach our highest level possible. This was much the same as days with Jason, so we fell into it comfortably pretty quickly. After lunch, they took us over to the intermediate slope and got us working on our wedge demos. Finally, the examiners started on the Level One progressions, teaching us from the ground up (first time skier). Although they were only teaching us the technical base that was given in the manual, both examiners managed to make it relaxed and enjoyable.

At dinner we were all quite happy about how we had performed on the first day and we spoke about what had been done differently to what we had been taught. All in all however, there were few if any differences and we were quite confident that we would be fine for the following days.

WEDNESDAY - DAY TWo

Straight away up at the ski field, we were waiting at the platter lift after many of us practicing our wedge turns before the start of the day at 9 am. Many of the prospective instructors were looking much better after their feedback from yesterday. Overall, most of the NONSTOP crew thought that we were looking the best due to our prior training efforts over the past weeks. Following the wedge turns we moved over to the beginner slope to start progressions from where we left off the day before. What followed for the rest of the day was the progression that we had been practicing for over a month. Many of the NONSTOP crew found it hard to keep concentration. Due to the heat of the day a number of the other students were stripping clothing off and looking unprofessional. While the NONSTOP members powered on like true pros keeping their clothing on.

With progressions for the beginner slope at an end, both examiners moved their groups over to the platter lift to start on the Level Two progressions. A lot of the progression was based on group management due to the number of people on the slope and many of us took note of that for use in the exam.

Nearing the end of the day, with minds numbed from information intake we were given the opportunity for a ski up T-1; much to the relief of everyone in the group as it was our first time up T-1 and first chance for an actual ski for the whole day.

At the end of the day we were told that there was to be a night session where we would be covering children-in-skiing and some skier-analysis through the use of videos. The session was quite uneventful, apart from one incident where a cat came into the room and livened things up by stirring the first sign of liveliness from the students.

At the end of the night session each member of each group was given at random a topic in which to present a lesson progression, similar to what we would be given as our teaching exam on Friday. These were only practice however and would be presented the following day.

THURSDAY

Thursday morning we were to meet at the bottom of the platter again where we were to start the practice lesson progressions we had prepared the night before. In Mark's group, Andrew was elected to go first, with Jack starting it off in Ben's. Both progressions went without hitch and other members in each group picked up on tips and tricks that Jason had shown us over the last month. The rest of the day progressed with watching everyone elses lesson progressions and seeing what things worked and what things didn't.

Following all the progressions being completed, we began doing wedge turn demos again, this time for examination. We started lapping doing wedge turns with the examiners giving us very little feedback, as it was in exam conditions. Most of the NONSTOP crew felt that they had done quite well with their wedge turns, thanks to Jason's persistence over the week leading up to the exam.

Once this was done, we moved up T-bar 1 for the exam on our personal skiing. This time around we worked at it for hours and were given much feedback from the examiners, as they were doing their best to get us to the highest pass rate possible in the very challenging conditions. Throughout this they were secretly videoing each person for later reference. Due to the snow conditions, many members of each group felt that they were skiing very poorly; except for Andrew who found that his new skis found it quite easy to hold an edge no matter how hard the snow.

At the end of the day we all huddled in dread to see what we would pick out of the hat for our exam question. However, each member got a question they felt they could easily pull off.

The rest of the night was spent in preparation for the teaching exam tomorrow, working on our progressions and running them by Jason. Except for Jack who slacked off and decided to wing it.

FRIDAY

The last day of the exam dawned and we were all eager to get it over with. Today was our teaching exam, in which we all had to 'instruct' 4 of the other candidates for 30 – 40 minutes doing part of the Level 1 – 2 progressions. It was a nerve wracking day, but watching some of the other candidates lessons before doing our own helped some of our feelings a lot. Finally, with all the lessons over and done with by just after 2pm we all had to wait in dreadful anticipation for 3pm when the results of the Level One exam would be handed out. 3 pm rolled past and the examiners were still dithering over the results, 3:15pm and many of us were fidgeting and worrying. At last, the results were handed out and much to our relief, all but one of the nonstop crew passed and were now certified ski instructors; with Zoe achieving a perfect 10 for her teach – a rare achievement.

Dinner came, which we shared with a few of the other candidates who had decided to come to Springer's pub to celebrate. It was a quiet affair, with all of us exhausted after the week of hard work. After however, was when the real party got started, with a full pub and all of the Porters Ski Instructors coming down to celebrate with us. The main event – the nude run – This was helped out by some vodka shots attached to a Nibulizer which evaporated the vodka to gas. On the other end was a mask that you sucked on like it was your last breath. This put everyone in a deluded state. Needless to say the run went off without a hitch. With demonstrations by Martin, He is a Porters Instructor who is an alumni of Jason's course. We ran outside in the freezing cold starting from the pub, across the road and around the Springfield doughnut before heading back, with many of the pubs patrons out the front cheering us on. It was to our shock (but perhaps not surprise) that our clothes had all been mixed together and thrown around, which resulted in a frantic search in the dark for some clothes to put on as we were all freezing.

Saturday had us driving into Christchurch to pick up some costumes for a Pimps and Hoes party that night, finding a costume proved quite a challenge at first but eventually three of us settled on six dollar suits, one on a fur coat and another on some fake red hair. James and Andrew dressed in similar suits, hat and cane. Jamie found a pin stripe suit with a pink shirt, fedora and high heeled shoes. Zoe borrowed a dress and used a fake wig that made her look the part of a hoe with relative ease. Mike went as a vice cop complete with pistol and moustache. The night went without hitch, many of the party goers getting wet because of water pistols bought by Zoe which simply added to the atmosphere.

Sunday was again a recovery day with everyone tired and worn out but with the exam out of the way nothing could dampen our spirits.