going pro....not the zero to hero route
Hi Kay,
The "zero to hero route" tends to describe the process where minimally experienced divers take a bunch of back-to-back courses, each time possessing the bare necessity prerequisites for training. The end result being a newly qualified diver whose logged dive experience primarily consists of training dives and who has very little breadth of experience beyond only what they've been taught.
<50 dives experience can still be considered pretty 'minimal' - especially when you consider that many of those dives are training dives (OWx4, AOWx5, RDx4 etc)... and it's only 1/2 the bare minimum prerequisite for graduating as an instructor.
As a comparison, a DM or instructor working in the tropics can realistically be doing 140+ dives per month. There's been many occasions where I've been doing 50 dives every 10 days... 5 dives per day, with a day-off only every 2 weeks...
The world is full of 'zero-to-hero' instructors. Getting 'the card' is easy, if you have money to slap on the table. However, you can't buy respect or credibility... and it is respect and credibility that allow you to sustain a career as a dive instructor. Zero-to-heros tend to burn out quite quickly... most through never developing the 'love' of diving that is needed to sustain them in a very demanding and under-paid industry. Some just can't get work abroad and go home penniless when their savings are burned through.
To get away from the 'stigma' of zero-to-hero training, you should attempt to get substantially more experience. Consider doing your DM course locally, then accruing perhaps 4x as much experience operating as a dive leader and assistant. You can do this part-time or weekends in the UK, whilst sustaining yourself with a 'real' job mon-fri. When you've substantially exceeded the bare minimum experience pre-requisites, then you could consider going abroad for IDC.
Where are you in the UK? There's many decent dive operations there that'd help you progress to a good foundation for instructor training.
If you are really set on going abroad, then you'll get better recommendations on location/centres etc if you can provide more detail on your diving preferences and goals. If you don't have preferences or goals yet.... then please re-read the paragraph that starts "
<50 dives experience can still be considered pretty 'minimal' "