certification process questions

[The Chairman]

that being said, I'm finding the information you have given me to be inconsistent

It's not inconsistent at all. There is a lot of knowledge you can learn without getting into the water. Dig in! That's where ScubaBoard shines! However, while it might contribute, head knowledge alone does not make a great diver. Applied experience is what makes a great dive professional. A lot of divers give great lip service to situational awareness. They should as it can mean the difference between adverting an accident before it becomes one or letting someone get seriously hurt. However, I have only dove with a handful of people who ever demonstrate it. When someone contracts with me to teach or guide them, it's my job to see every possible inconvenience and danger that comes their way. That takes a lot of work and attention to detail directed at them. A newly certed diver with less than a couple hundred dives is still learning their equipment and refining their techniques. Their diving is not fully automatic and they have to pay a good amount of attention to themselves before they can focus on a client. Sure, they've got all sorts of information swimming around in their brain, but they aren't truly a veteran diver... yet. It simply takes time in the water to be a competent professional and not enough divers or their instructors respect that.

I am very familiar with assuming responsibility for others lives, seeing peoples lives be taken, and yes even taking lives. I would bet that I have seen and experienced more along those lines that a vast majority of diving professionals. I would beg to say, (and I'm sure the individuals you mention with deaths on their watch would agree) that is something that cant be taught or learned from a book, online course, or message board post. nowhere in any of my posts have I said, insinuated, or made light of the seriousness, responsibilities, and dangers involved in diving.

It's not about just assuming responsibility for others' safety. It's having the in water experience to see it before it gets to them. I was a Cub Master and a Scout Master before I became a DM and then an instructor. While the experiences were valuable in maturing me, they never translated into seeing problems in the water. Yes, I had ten or twenty times the required dives and that made a lot of difference. After all, I have been diving since 1969 and I have learned a lot from the mistakes of others. No, you don't need a bazillion dives and a forty plus year history of diving to be a DM. However, it's my humble opinion that the minimums are woefully inadequate to create a competent professional. Sticking to the minimums and concentrating on advancing as quickly as possible turns out a lot of cidiots: Certified Idiots. Those are the divers whose skills and experience don't reflect the cards in their wallet. You are given new skills, new tools with each class. Refine those a bit, get a lot of diving in between each class and your chances of becoming a cidiot are quite low. Dive for the fun of it. Let the professional certs come after you are truly ready for them.

I don't have a problem with learning all that you can, online, inline, mainline or in person. Knowledge is great and reading your rescue class manual, and then the manuals from other agencies will put you ahead in that class. Just keep in mind that skills are developed over time and in the water. Skills are the ability to put that head knowledge into use. Skills are really what's important.

I guess my perceived negativity stems from me wanting to increase my knowledge, and that not being received too well. would you yell at a high school student for taking college prep courses?

No one has "yelled". No one has said reading is a bad idea. Don't lose the real message here. You glibly popped in that you will become a Dive Master and that the assessment was made after only one class. I'm trying to help you see that arm chair DMs can be dangerous in the water. If you want to assign any negativity towards what you wrote, you should know that it's towards that. Unfortunately, a large part of the Dive Industry seems to run as a huge Ponzi scheme. The message is that YOU TOO CAN BE AN INSTRUCTOR AND LIVE THE DREAM! but they never tell you that we have a glut of instructors already. I never became an instructor to earn a living. Oh, I probably could if I needed to. I could open up NetDoc's Scuba Instructor Emporium and turn 'em out like hamburgers at a McDonalds. It's just not my style. ScubaBoard was more of a fluke than a well thought out business plan. It grew so fast that I was forced to make it replace my salary. I do OK, but I don't think of myself as a "boss". I'm user #879 (or something like that). My opinion is just as valid as anyone else's. It's just as flawed too. I think this basic view of mine is one reason why SB has done so well. Here's a final thought:

What's the difference between a large pizza and a dive instructor or DM?

Spoiler

A large pizza can feed a family of four