Becoming a lifeguard

 

I heard about the lifeguard job I have now, through a friend of mine. She told me it was a seasonal job over at bobby hicks pool, which was right across the street from my high school, that payed ten dollars an hour and to a teenager that sounded amazing. She then gave me some background information on CPR and what it’s like to work at the pool and helped me with the application. Before I was able to start I had to take physical tests in the water that I had practiced doing many days prior and become certified in CPR, life-guarding skills, and a number of other things. The certification part was easy. All I had to do was pay attention and study, plus most of it was common sense. Doing the physical tests were tougher for me because I wasn’t the most fit at the time. There were four parts to the physical part, a three-hundred swim, the brick, treading, and rescues. The swim was to be done with rhythmic breathing and without switching from one way of swimming to another in the middle of the swim; for example, if I push off the wall and start swimming free-style then I can’t switch to breast stroke until I get to the other wall. The brick test involved a ten-pound brick that was dropped twenty-five meters away from you. The objective is to swim to the brick, dive down to pick it up, swim back to the wall on your back while keeping both hands on the brick, then getting yourself and the brick out of the water in under a minute and forty-five seconds. Treading was easy for me since I naturally float. For this part, you are to tread for three minutes without using your hands. I could’ve gone for five or ten minutes but then I’d just be showing off. The last one was the rescues, you were to go through a series of situations where your victim is active, passive or has some type of head, neck, or spinal injury. The active and passive victims are the easiest because less steps are involved but the head, neck, or spinal injury has a lot of steps to it since you have to be more careful. After I passed everything in the training, I was finally able to go through the hiring process. It took a month but was worth it because I am now a part of the permanent staff making eleven ninety-two an hour for sun bathing and minimal custodial work.