From my experience, it is worth looking for a particular instructor: you will find out that it is not much more expensive per hour of their time to get a well known instructor with a good reputation than another instructor.
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From my experience, it is worth looking for a particular instructor: you will find out that it is not much more expensive per hour of their time to get a well known instructor with a good reputation than another instructor.
You can find indirect ways to find them: you can have instructors who talk in diving shows, for example Mark Powell, who has written books about technical diving.See post #2. How exactly are you finding your instructor?
Some defence of the instructor.
Was buoyancy & trim part of the course or were you supposed to already be proficient?
If I’m teaching a skill, but the student isn’t up to scratch on their general diving skills, and I feel it appropriate to go back over them - I stop the planned lesson. The student will have to either:
* do extra dives, or
* arrange another session to do the course.
I teach in a club where competence is important. In the commercial world you get taught what you pay for.
First, I shouldn't have posted that. However, it was seen and he is owed an explanation from my POV.Some defence of the instructor.
Was buoyancy & trim part of the course or were you supposed to already be proficient?
INTERVIEW your instructor ask previous students ...........its up to you to do the picking not who conveniently works for the store
From my experience, it is worth looking for a particular instructor: you will find out that it is not much more expensive per hour of their time to get a well known instructor with a good reputation than another instructor.
You can find indirect ways to find them: you can have instructors who talk in diving shows, for example Mark Powell, who has written books about technical diving.
Some have written books and are well known like Martin Farr.
If you check the prices of instruction with well known instructors you will see that the premium is generally not huge, but you will have to incur some travel costs.
Also you can join a diving club and/or ask around when you go training/diving: this is usually how I found local instructors.
For a practical example, if you browse the speaker list here for this show:
Dive Show Speakers | #GODiving | Go Diving Show
You will see for example John Kendall, who is a GUE instructor. I did a class with him and learned a lot. If you have time, you can even go to the talk and talk to them in person
I see what you mean and disagree with you.All three of these posts highlight my original point, agencies are failing. A new OW student is not going to know how to do this, the agencies need to ensure their OW instructors all continuously meet agency standards, that is one of the agencies main reasons for existing.
For more advanced training a student will have a better idea of what he is looking for so all these suggestions are good. I would still argue that agencies could provide a better service by facilitating student searches, and it would help them police their own and execute better quality control.