Types of Skydiving for Beginners

There are three types of skydiving for beginners: tandem, IAD/Static line, and AFF. A tandem skydive is a jump where the student is strapped into a harness and attached to a certified tandem instructor. This method of skydiving is often used for people that only want to jump one time or people that are testing out the sport to see if they like it. I did this type of jump as my first jump. In an IAD or static line jump the student has his or her own parachute, but it is pulled out right as they leave the plane.  In a static line jump the parachute is tied to a line that is tied to the plane; so that the line will pull out the parachute as one jumps out of the plane, and the line will detached from the parachute. In a IAD, Instructor Assisted Deployment, the instructor pulls the parachute for the student as he or she is jumping out of the plane. AFF is a progression of jumps that will allow for a student to become a certified skydiver. In AFF there are multiple levels that teach the student different skills. The student must demonstrate these different skills to pass each level to move on to the next one. I went through AFF and actually just graduated.

These are two videos of the world record vertical freeflying formation.
1. The world record with the song radioactive playing in the background
2. The world record from one persons point of view

Critical Thinking

"Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action." (Michael Scriven & Richard Paul)
"Critical thinking...the awakening of the intellect to the study of itself." (criticalthinking.org)
"disciplined thinking that is clear, rational, open-minded, and informed by evidence" (dictionary.com)
"Critical thinking is a set of skills and attitudes that are deployed selectively to evaluate arguments (reasons and their companion conclusions) according to explicit standards of rationality." (ius.edu)"The process of independently analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information as a guide to behavior and beliefs." (about.com)

After doing my research, I think that critical thinking is obviously a deeper form of thinking; but it seems like you can make up any type of definition that you want because of the ambiguity of the phrase critical thinking.

Initial Critical thinking

I would say that critical thinking is like problem solving. I have heard this term all throughout my life in every level of schooling especially at Jesuit. I think the you would use critical thinking when you are put into a situation that you do not know much about, and you have to use previous learned knowledge in an attempt to figure out this new and unfamiliar problem or situation. Jesuit did an excellent job of teaching us how to think critically, and I believe that I think critically. I would say that I think critically most often when I am doing schoolwork or taking a test, but I believe that I also use it when I am trying to set something up, fix something, or understand why something works. I do not think that it was hard to think critically about critical thinking, but I do think it was hard to put it into words.

Free Flying and Tracking

When skydiving, there are multiple different positions that you can do. The two positions that I am going to talk about are free flying and tracking. First I am going to start with free flying. Free flying is when you are falling in a position that is different from the normal skydiving position, which is falling on your belly. When you are free flying, you could be falling in a sitting position, a position on your back, a standing position, or a diving head first position. Free flying is recognized as one of the hardest forms of flying. When you are belly flying, you are falling at about 120 miles per hour, which is terminal velocity. When you are free flying, there is less surface area for the air to push up against, which causes you to fall closer to 160 to 200 miles per hour; but, because the parachute is designed to open at 120 miles per hour, someone that is free flying must go onto their belly to slow down to 120 mph so he can deploy his parachute. When I bunch of people are free flying or belly flying close together, they need to be able to spread out before deploying their parachutes; so the different people's parachutes do not get tangled. These people falling together use tracking to get away from one another. Tracking is an altered form of belly flying which allows the skydiver to have forward movement. In a normal skydiving position you arch at the hips, have your arms bent at a 90 degree angle, have the upper thigh straight with a 45 degree bend your knees, and your toes pointed.
 This is an example of the standard skydiving position.
In tracking you try to be as straight as possible. You have your whole body straight with your arms by your side.
  This is an example of tracking.

Awesome Free Flying
In this video there is free flying from the beginning to about four minutes into the video and from the seven minute mark to about the ten minute mark. At the 3:20 minute mark, when the skydiving straighten their body, they are tracking to try to separate themselves from the others.

my skydiving history

I am not exactly sure when I first learned what skydiving was; but I know that I knew what it was in eighth grade at Jesuit because my friend, Ashton, and I agreed that right when we turned eighteen that we would go jump out of an airplane. This agreement was serious; we were set on doing this once we turned eighteen. We told a bunch of our friends when we were seniors. A bunch of them wanted to go skydiving too, so we had a big group going. We went skydiving on July seventh right after the Abry twins turned eighteen, and we all loved it. I knew that I would love it because I have always loved roller coasters and anything like that. After we jumped, the people that own the skydiving place told us about the AFF skydiving course that one can go threw to become certified to go solo skydiving. The Abrys, Thomas and Patrick, and I wanted to do this as soon as we heard about it. Once the summer had ended and we were in school, our parents had told us that we should wait until the summer to do it when we asked if we could do the solo course over Christmas break; but it was obvious that they did not really want us to do it. When the summer came around, we asked again; and they had no reason to say no, so we did the course. I love skydiving; it is an amazing feeling and is extremely fun and exciting.
I would like to learn everything there is to know about skydiving. There is so much for me to discover. I can find out about the different types of flying, the different types of parachutes and how they are made and packed, the different levels of certification for skydivers and for parachute packers, the different types of instructors or coaches, and many other things.