This is a short assignment that I was asked to write for one of the writing classes I am currently taking, the prompt for the assignment was expertise, I hope you enjoy.
I wouldn't normally declare myself an expert at anything, due to my personal prohibition against decisive declarations. Since I have to, I'd say I'm an expert when it comes to things pool related. After years of swimming, water polo, lifeguarding and teaching swim lessons I've seen and learned a lot. At one time I could swim the length of the pool underwater twice without breathing, I could carry two people while treading water or perform a perfect spinal turn underwater.
“A pH level between 7.4-7.6 is the optimal range for a public swimming pool,
but if it gets as high as 8.0 everyone should be cleared from the water.”
It can be a source of soreness when you have an skill set or area of expertise that is no longer relevant. I’m trying out for the swim team, but there’s a better than fifty percent chance I won’t make the team, and if I don’t then everything I know about swimming will once again fade into useless obscurity. It took forty hours of training to become a lifeguard and another sixty to become a certified swim instructor; at one point I had four different certifications but I’ve since allowed those certifications to lapse, expiring one at a time until they were all gone. The knowledge still rattles around up there, never getting a chance to get out and stretch its legs.
“People are much more sensitive to changes in temperature when they’re
in the water, even a two degree change will almost certainly be noticed.”
Even if I make the swim team it only delays the inevitable a few years, at the end of it all this area of expertise is quickly becoming a part of my past. I guess it’s just a part of life, you grow up acquiring student skills only to abandon them for a career, when you’re a parent eventually your children will move out and what knowledge you accumulated will begin collecting dust. Still it feels a little sad to realize that something that was once a huge part of my life will cease to be important.
