With summer rapidly approaching there are many opportunities to find life guard jobs. Whether it’s a job at your local pool, a recreation center or a water park like the rapids.

Over the weekend I spent several hours doing a life guard class for the rapids. There are many things you have to be able to do before getting your life guard certification.

This certain certification requires you do an online section that has 28 multiple choice evaluations. A CPR, First Aid, and a swim test.

The swim test is usually the thing you start off with first. This consists of a 300 yard consecutive swim, a 2 minute tread with your hands out of the water, and a section where you go down 12ft feet first and pick up 10 pound brick. If you fail to pass any of these things you would automatically fail the test and have to go home, on some occasions they would give you a second chance. But of course this can vary based on where you’re planning to get your certification at.

Usually after the swim test you go over they different types of saves and when is the appropriate time to use them.

After you pass the swim test you spend the whole next day going over CPR, rescue breathing, and the Heimlich maneuver. We went through these techniques multiple times on adult dolls and infant dolls to ensure we were capable of performing it on both.

Once everyone understood when was the proper time to use CPR, Rescue Breathing and the Heimlich we moved on to the First aid class. During this class they discussed the different kinds of burns (1st degree, 2nd degree, and 3rd degree), they discussed minor health situations such as: heat exhaustion, asthma, and proper care for nose bleeds. The more important things that were discussed were heart attacks, strokes, and seizures.

When all of the classes were finished we had to take a test that gives you a scenario and makes you choose the proper way to approach it. They also give you questions about definitions that you should know when being a life guard that they teach you during class.

During the summer being a life guard is one of the most wanted jobs, but going through training is one of the most exhausting things I’ve done. After the fact of passing my certification I felt extremely proud of myself for pushing myself further than I thought I could. I feel like being a life guard is one of the most rewarding jobs you can have and anyone that’s good at swimming would enjoy this job.