My First Skydive And Almost My Last

It's been almost a year and I find this video pretty funny now, but it wasn't so funny when it happened. I was on my very first solo AFF jump after having done 9 tandems (silly, I know) so I figured only having one AFF instructor would be fine. There's normally 2 most likely for reasons like this. I went to practice touch the handle for my pilot chute and when I did, I wasn't able to find it, which threw off my body position and caused us to go into a pretty high-speed spin. When that occurs there's not many options, and had he pulled my chute before letting go, I would have possibly had a malfunction from spinning, which is not great for someone on their first jump. When he let go, we're taught in ground school to pull our chute, but since I couldn't find it to begin with AND I was in one of the worst orientations to pull it (on my back) even if I was able to find it. From either adrenaline overload or panic I failed to pull my chute and it felt like seconds between spinning and him grabbing me and pulling. Luckily, he did grab me and managed to pull my chute while simultaneously flipping me upright to prevent me getting tangled in the bridle of the pilot chute. I'm very thankful for his quick thinking as we had lost a significant amount of altitude and I was under canopy at about 4000 ft which as students should be more like 5500 ft😅 I landed safely and am very glad to laugh about it now that I'm way more experienced! I hope this brings a laugh at the killer break dancing I was apparently trying to do up there🤣 Blue skies🤙