One of things about learning to scuba dive is that you don't know, "what you don't know."
You have no frame of reference to judge how a piece of equipment should fit, or how your body reacts under pressure, such as your ears. You must learn to clear your ears early, often and gently when you scuba dive. This puts far less strain on your ears than dropping a few metres, and then trying to do a hard clear.
Some divers are able to clear their ears by swallowing, wiggling their jaw or using the ‘Valsalva Manoeuvre’. (This is where you hold your nose and gently blow into it.) This action increases pressure in both the middle ear and the chest, and can effectively equalise the pressure in the ears when the surrounding or ambient pressure has changed. But this must ALWAYS be done in a very gentle manner because if it is not, it can cause mechanical damage to parts of your ear.
As a non or new diver, how can you learn “what is gentle?” It can be difficult to comprehend because you have no physical reference of what a gentle or a hard ear clear feels like. One option is to play with a medical device called ‘Otovent Dive’. This non-surgical drug free method is used by ENT consultants to help relieve the symptoms of ‘Glue Ear’ in children. And because this gently opens up the Eustachian tubes it can also be used by non and new divers to learn what gentle middle ear equalisation feels like.