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Educating Adventures Instructor Internships: What you should know (Review) June 20, 2009

Posted by Sharny in : Essay, USA Trip, Work, World , add a comment

I wanted to write this post in order to give people in my position of a little over a year ago the information that I would have liked at the time, or at least what I would have liked before arriving at the training. I am not in any way affiliated with Educating Adventures, I’m writing this completely freely and because I’d like people to have a bit more information about what they’re getting into, an apposing viewpoint if you will although I make no bones about how amazing my season was and the major part that Educating Adventures played. I also have to say that this is just what I experienced and may or may not be what they do in following years, I doubt it would change that much though.

Presumably you’ve already been browsing through EA’s information and are trying to find a bit more about it, you conscientious consumer you. As far as I know, EA still have the monopoly on what they offer, a training course followed by a job offer. Plus they offer their course at a much lower rate than the many other competitors that have longer training programs but no work. Much cheaper in fact. Of courses, the EA course is a lot more intensive. Which is where I will start.

They advertise their course as a 3 week program designed to train you to level one ski instructor standards and get you qualified before you actually start work. In reality, what we received was 6 days of on snow training and 1 day of off snow theory. Even including the exam it doesn’t really come into 3 calendar weeks either so I’m not entirely sure where they pulled that number from. Either way, that’s what you’re getting.

In the days that we weren’t training they pretty much left us to our own devices to get things done. Which was kinda sucky to be honest. No help getting to Reno to apply for social security numbers (wasn’t an issue for me personally as I came out early and already had mine) or really any help with transport to get to anywhere we might want to go. It really wouldn’t have been that hard for them to arrange a bus to get everyone to Reno and back but they seemed to be taking the cheap way out wherever possible. Various figures for how long the walk was from our accomodation (on the edge of King’s Beach) to the nearest supermarket were quoted, usually between 5 and 10 minutes. In reality it was more like 15-20 minutes but of course the reason that they got this wrong is because they had a car and so didn’t have to walk so wouldn’t know how long it took.

It’s true to say that there is a little grumble in a lot of all this and I am just saying the negative stuff first, the other element that added to everyone’s general sour moods was the lack of snow. The 08/09 season was a bit late in Tahoe and when we all got to the training there wasn’t a patch of snow in sight which was naturally pretty depressing and caused us to be much more critical of everything else that was happening. Things did actually work themself out and we didn’t lose any time on snow due to the magical powers of man made snow.

So after arriving and being given a few days off we had one day of theory, nothing wrong with that, it included some fun little bits and pieces. After that we had another couple of days off hoping that Northstar would be able to make the snow for us to start training on Saturday. It’s worth noting that the way they put it to us was that if there wasn’t snow falling then Northstar would make snow for us. In reality, they were making snow just to try and get open and start being able to make some money and we had no exclusivety whatsoever, other than the fact that we were in ski school. It meant that when we did finally start the training it was very crowded and pretty limited. This isn’t EA’s fault of course but you should be aware that the weather could really screw your experience over, hopefully you will be lucky, obviously there’s nothing you can do about it, it’s just a risk that is inherent in a sport such as ours.

The other thing that became obvious to different people at different times was that the training they offered over this intensive course is in fact offered for free by our resorts in order to train their instructors. Of course, you don’t get a nice intensive course leading straight into the exam but don’t be under the impression that this training is more special than it is, both Northstar and it’s sister resort Sierra (my resort) offered weekly clinics to work towards exams.

One other little thing to note is the 98% pass rate and the claims that people of any ability are welcomed. Nothing wrong with that pass rate, indeed in Tahoe the pass rate was actually 100% as far as I’m aware but it says as much about the nature of the exam than it does about the quality of the training. I’m not saying the training was bad by any means, it really wasn’t, but the reason the pass rate is so high is because the exam is set up for passing and not failing candidates. The first two days are designed to be learning as well as examining experiences so are more like extra days on the training but with a different trainer, a feature that is no bad thing. It’s only really the last day of the 3 day exam that is an exam and even then it’s pretty relaxed.

The other part of that is any ability being welcomed. The 98% pass rate didn’t include the people who deffered their entry because they were advised not to do the exam. That included a decent percentage of the “beginner” training group. It would be true to say that actually most of the people who chose not to do the exam would have passed if they had done it but they didn’t feel ready and so chose to wait. The point being if you haven’t done much skiing but still want to do this (awesome) don’t necessarily think you’ll feel ready to sit the level 1 directly following the training. You can still do the course and still have the job but chances are you won’t feel ready to do your level 1 until a bit later in the season.

One other little nit pick is that if you make alternate travel arangements to arrive at the training don’t expect EA to make things particularly easy for you. I happened to luck out and get a ride up there and had a place to stay due to knowing some people up there due to the pre-season training I did but if you’re thinking of doing something different instead of going to the San Francisco stop over be prepared to get yourself to the training off your own back entirely.

It’s also worth noting that although the EA representatives guiding you through the training are perfectly friendly and try to be helpful they are a tad useless in a practical sense, which is a bit difficult to describe and probably just something you’ll realise when you get there.

One last bad part, this time about something outside of EA control: Visas. I can’t say about Canada (although from what I gather it’s a safer bet) but the US are limiting the amount of visas at increasing rates which is a real danger to the EA model: their training course isn’t nearly so unique if no one can get visas to work afterwards. In order to guarantee the visas got through for my season my resort and it’s sister held a mandatory (but not actually mandatory) “pre-season training camp” in order to say they needed their instructors early and therefore letting them put their applications in early, meaning that many other californian resorts had no H2B visas. That’s probably not what will go down this year but with the visa situation as it is the course is a fair risk. Even returning employees already qualified have been warned that the visas may not be available for them if they get unlucky so for unexperienced level ones the chances are even lower. Really, you are only above the uncertified locals and they don’t need visas, as there aren’t really any uncertified foreign instructors. Essentially: Be wary, you may not get your visa, and the risk is only increasing. Hopefully the visa cap will be raised with new legislation some time soon but for now your chance to work is at risk.

In conclusion, the opportunity Educating Adventures gave me to have the best experience of my life but it’s not the only way to get the preciously advertised level one. There are other options and if you are considering EA you should consider them too, just to make sure that spending the $4,000+ is worth it for you. For me, I think it was and I hope to do seasons again in the future, by which time I may just about get my investment back.

Just remember, you can’t really put a price on good experiences. Despite all the negatives of the training, it really wasn’t all bad and enabled me to have a fantastic time.

To say it’s been a while would be misleading June 16, 2009

Posted by Sharny in : Life, Misc, USA Trip , add a comment

I’m so well meaning with this here blog. I mean, it doesn’t really matter after all, I get 1 page view per day with delightful keywords such as “shiny guitar gear + opium”, ” search words biggest red back” and ” “the girl who” lundone”. I’ve got to wonder if any of the people searching for these things actually got anything like what they were after. Especially the first one, what the hell is going on there. This is the internet though after all.

I didn’t really even have a “I’m going away for a while” post so really if anyone was following this they would think it just died without explanation (which does happen, quite a few favourite blogs of mine have just evaporated from the intertubes much to my dismay) but in reality I was just in another country doing something different and new.

To be specific, I was in California playing grown up and being a ski instructor (although lets face it, we’re not the most grown up of professions). And it was epic. To say it’s changed my life would be a ridiculous understatement. Really, if I was going to go into details about it all I would need a whole series of posts and I don’t seem to be able to dedicate myself enough to writing quite enough to do that at the moment. Suffice to say that as an experience I recommend it and I really recommend trying skiing too, it’s the most amazing outdoor activity I think you’ll ever try.

So here we have this jumbled blog post, basically saying that I’m gonna try and write stuff again. I should write more, I know this. Perhaps it’s time to uninstall stumbleupon, it’s a real horror for my productivity. Yes, I think that’s what I’ll do. Actually force myself to do something useful. See, this blogging thing has helped me already, why didn’t I try it before…?

Turisas 01/10/08 (Dragonforce were there too…) October 9, 2008

Posted by Sharny in : Entertainment, Music, Uncategorized , add a comment

After a rather chaotic day where nothing much really went to plan we eventually managed to get on a bus and find ourselves in town, this was not before freaking out the rest of the bus with our loud talking on a whole manner of topics, the last of which was horrific porn… Of course, this was not the beginning of our reign of terror, before getting on the bus we had filled the “Rowdy gang of youths” role very well due to the fighting and throwing of biscuits going on.

On a side note, being part of such a gang of youths is quite a lot of fun. Good confidence boost to just be able to be silly and get funny looks from people.

So, once we arrived in town we headed to Rock City and found that people were being let in but that obviously hadn’t been going on long since our friends in the queue were not too close to the door. We easily joined ourselves to them and headed in.

From this point we spent a long time in a sort of oddly shaped circle, making people around us give us strange looks due to our various innuendos and fondlings and whatnot. During this, most of us got our faces painted in the Turisas red + black stripes. We weren’t alone in this painting, despite Dragonforce being the headliners there were clearly plenty of Turisas fans there. As time went on we gradually got more and more crushed by the crowd forming and had to push out a little to avoid just being swamped.

Eventually Turisas came on, with an epically awesome cheesy intro. I’m not going to try and recount the set list in order, that’s just a train to fail. However, I’m pretty sure these were the songs they played: A portage to the unknown, Battle Metal, In the court of Jarisleif (which was slightly extended, woot!), Rasputin and to Holmgard and beyond. They also did their little Fuck guitar solos bit and, for an extra treat, we got to sing happy birthday to their newest accordion player who’s birthday would be the 2nd of October, I do believe. According to their lead singer, she was only 16 when she started to tour with them and now is just turning 18. Pretty insane really, to be doing something so awesome as that so young.

During the performance I got jostled a bit round the crowd away from everyone else but somehow ended up back next to them at the end, through some kind of pure fluke. After that we ploughed our way out of the crowd and went outside. As expected, we were all pretty hyped up. A couple of my friends went back in to see if earlier promises of getting backstage to meet the band were possible. I hung back since I figured it was very unlikely but after a while we headed in and were met with a fun surprise.

Just as we were heading up the stairs back to the main room, two of the members of Turisas were coming out of the door to the Rig. My friends and I were actually the first people to jump at this opportunity and we immediately all got ourselves high fives from both of them. The two in question would be Jussi Wickström (guitarist) and Netta Skog (accordion, as mentioned earlier). After this I saw a couple of my friends at possibly the most excited I have ever seen them, both getting hugs and autographs from both of them. After this quite a crowd was forming with other people wanting to get autographs and such.

I guess the irony is that arguably the biggest fan of Turisas of all of us (me) didn’t bother getting an autograph. Why? I was happy enough meeting them, the thing about autographs is that I don’t collect them for a start but if I did get them I would simply end up loosing them. No one can take away the experience of having high fived them both though, that was truly awesome. It’s also that I’m a little afraid of asking for things such as this, what with my difficult to spell name.

After all this hubbub we all headed down to McDonald’s (as it is reliably open at almost any hour) and bought various different foods and drinks. I didn’t get anything myself as…well…I don’t really go for that stuff and wasn’t especially hungry/thirsty. Of course, our delightfully painted faces caused us to get some nice funny looks from people that we passed, that’s always fun.

Once we were done there we headed back up to Rock City and went in to find Dragonforce in full swing. We watched for a little while but none of us really like Dragonforce and nothing about the performance was interesting enough to stick at it. I can’t say that they were bad, just that I don’t like them and therefore had little interest in seeing them once I had confirmed that their solos weren’t laughably bad (they seemed to be playing alright, from what I could see/hear, although you can get away with a lot of mistakes in what they play) so we all left, barring the one of us that does actually like Dragonforce.

Halfway back to the bus stop, it was realised that we had left a jacket behind so a couple of party members went back to get it. We all just stood around waiting for them and eventually caught the bus back home again. The bus, incidentally, was surprisingly full for such a journey. Probably Goose Fair’s fault.

So that was that.

Another spectacular show by Turisas, easily upstaging Dragonforce but perhaps not if you’re a fan of them. Proof that you should never have Turisas as your support. All in all an awesome stuff once again, I can be sure that I’ll be seeing them live many more times whenever I get the chance.

Neglected September 29, 2008

Posted by Sharny in : Life, Scraps, USA Trip, Work , add a comment

I haven’t really been paying much attention to this here part of the internet recently. It comes from things getting busier and as that happens certain things drop off my attention, this being one of them. As I said in a previous post (I think…), I am still writing but in a much more private setting. Although my fears of lacking censorship in my private writing have kept me from doing it in the past it has just felt rather necessary this last month to get my thoughts, feelings and events down as I feel the ever increasing pressure of my departure.

As it happens, said departure is on the 12th of October, which is substantially earlier than I had anticipated but is very very exciting.  Today is also the day I hand in my notice at work, although my last shift will actually be a week tomorrow.

Hmm, as it happens, I don’t actually know what else to write here. I certainly have things to write, but they are organisational and reflective and don’t have a place on this blog. I feel that the neglect it has been feeling is only likely to get worse in the coming weeks and months. One post I can guarantee you is the one documenting the Turisas/Dragonforce gig this wednesday, which shall be attended by almost all my best friends, as well as many other acquaintances. It should be a lot of fun.

So much for social meat eating September 10, 2008

Posted by Sharny in : Life , add a comment

Although I continue to claim coinage on the term (granted I probably wasn’t the one to come up with it) I can’t really say that’s what I am any more. It did start out that way, yes, but I seem to be just be eating meat as normal now.

Apparently starting again I got something of a taste for it again, really I don’t think vegetarianism was for me, I’ve never enjoyed restricting my options and this was the biggest restriction of them all. If I’m honest it kinda fits in with the plans that I had originally where I would scale up my meat eating to a sort of normal level so I was comfortable with it in preparation for being in the US. I wasn’t sure exactly how this would work at the time but apparently things have just slotted into place.

I was originally going to write more about the idea of social meat eating and the massive moral cop out that it is. It’s sort of like some kind of fence sitter, not strong enough in belief to not do it under peer pressure but will try and keep it up out of sight of the rest of the world. Really quite a terrible way to go about things from a strong moral standpoint. I think in that sense just calling myself a meat eater like everyone else is much better.

So far I don’t really feel any different, so it remains to be seen whether eating meat will really effect me very much but it’s nice to be able to eat the real version of some favourite meaty meals again, particularly curries, pizzas and also the joy of some real (bastardised, as we English tend to do) fajitas.

Essentially, it’s all ended up ok in the end. That’s always nice…

Ok then August 31, 2008

Posted by Sharny in : Scraps, Work , add a comment

Right, so, I’ve decided that I’m just gonna post my little work based nuggets here since I really can’t be doing with creating a separate attempt at an anonymous blog about it. As such, I don’t intend to say anything mean about people, merely just report on the cool/odd happenings of the day. I’ve been thinking about them since I started really but not yet wrote them down, so I’ll start with a few that I can remember

There is, of course, a ton that I’ve forgotten but hopefully if I document them each day that I’m there then some fun things will pop up.

*It should be noted that you shouldn’t take offence to this, it would be indeed wise to just do as I do and laugh at silly racism. You may, of course, say “oh but you don’t know what it’s like to have people hating just because of something you can’t change” when in fact, my obviously German surname and first name have caused me to be on the receiving end of plenty of hate. The obvious difference, of course, is that when someone calls you a Nazi, or Hitler, they are actually referring to a group or single person responsible for the deaths of millions of people, whereas when someone kills you a nigger it means almost nothing except for the meaning you (or society) give it. In that sense, I have little pity if you do choose to take offence.