Pervasive "Going Pro" Theme in New Divers

[MXGratefulDiver]

Lest this turn into another why go pro vs. not go pro thread, I might wax poetic very similarly about my years working in the Swiss Alps - it doesn't answer the core of my question - why do untalented students feel that they CAN (and thusly should) become the instructor? It has to be more than the lifestyle... and can PADI's marketing message really be that strong? If so, those guys are seriously in the wrong business.

I wonder how much of it is socioeconomic? How many candidates are privileged kids who are blowing off a few years after university? Mid-life crisis candidates that suddenly "find" diving? It just seems that there must be something dramatically different about it.

A great deal of it is marketing ... part of instructor training is how to sell continuing education. Depending on the candidate, some take it to greater lengths than others. I know instructors who tell every OW student ... regardless of how well they do ... that they're a "natural", and should consider signing up for classes at least through the divemaster level. Naturally, this is what almost all of them want to hear.

In eight years, I've trained three divemasters. I've talked probably three times that many out of becoming DM's ... because what came out during our interviews was that the DM class doesn't offer what they really wanted it for, which is better skills and a more confident attitude about their diving. I steered them in directions that would better achieve those goals.

Conversely, I know instructors who turn out two or three DM's a month. They make more money at it than I do ... but the majority of their DM's are not even equal in skills to many of my AOW students ... and are not people I would want in the water with somebody I care about.

The motivation is money. The method is a sales pitch that people want to hear. Selling a product to a willing customer is easy. Whether it's the right product for them or not is another matter altogether ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Saldiac]

When I moved here (Madeira) and started diving again my LDS instructors actually told me to ease up on taking a lot of courses. While I like being challenged and acquire new skills they helped to create a nice balance of fun dives where I focus on practicing the basic skills and training dives where I tackle new skills.
Now that I've been diving with those guys for almost a year they started joking that I might do the DM course at some point. I haven't decided yet but I want to get at least 100 dives and do a few other courses before even seriously considering DM. Even though I'm not interested in going pro (atm?) getting DM certification might earn me some cheaper diving with the LDS as they might ask me to help out on occasion.

 

[James R]

As a DM on a charter, I see tons of DM candidates. Most of them are pretty solid divers. That said, there are some that I wonder WTF they are thinking. For example, if you are working on becoming a DM and are already hitting up the boat's owner about working for him, but have to hold on to me on a dive because you are scared then you probably shouldn't be a DM yet! What are you going to do when you are scared and a customer is also unsure and nervous? That, friends, is a recipe for something really bad to happen.

Not to go too far off topic, but there are also a lot of these new DMs that go straight to the IDC pretty much right away. So now you have an instructor with less than a year of experience and 80% of the dives this person has done happened while taking or helping with a class.

This is similar to those IT people that take an MCSE bootcamp, get the certification(s), then come to work and I can't put them on anything because they have no idea what they are doing. All they know are test answers.

 

[Colliam7]

An 18 y.o. college freshman comes to you and says, 'Dad / Mom, I have decided that I really want to be a teacher when I finish undergraduate school. So, I talked to my advisor, and am going to begin aligning my coursework to make sure I get all the pre-requisite courses in as soon as I can.'

What do you (who really wanted them to go into Law / Medicine / Business / anything lucrative) say to them? 'What are you thinking? What do you know about life? You are only 18. You are immature. You need to grab a buddy and go LIVE for a few years before you could ever think of teaching someone else anything.'

 

[racerx_]

I think one big contributing factor is the nature of how dive training is structured. You start as an OW diver knowing you've got an 18meter "limit" (I know that term is not necessarily accurate but for all intents and purposes that's how it's pitched). If you take AOW you unlock a new world of possibilities at 30-40meters. taking the nitrox class lets you breathe mixed gas and say words like "nitrox" on the dive boat.. And the list goes on..

Im not against the structure, but it's kind of a set up from the start because new divers are conditioned to think that one more class or level of training will give them some secret dive info or access they've been waiting for. Maybe peak performance buoyancy will magically make them neutrally buoyant at all times in the water.. So if you follow that line of thought, it's natural to assum becoming a dive master is the holy grail and will give me access to all dive related knowledge and glory.

Ive learned so much on this forum, and through related blogs, etc I keep thinking there are some major missing pieces in a lot of dive training as a lot of major things I've learned I picked up here and were nowhere to be found in my OW, AOW, or even the illustrious nitrox course!

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

As a DM on a charter, I see tons of DM candidates. Most of them are pretty solid divers. That said, there are some that I wonder WTF they are thinking. For example, if you are working on becoming a DM and are already hitting up the boat's owner about working for him, but have to hold on to me on a dive because you are scared then you probably shouldn't be a DM yet! What are you going to do when you are scared and a customer is also unsure and nervous? That, friends, is a recipe for something really bad to happen.

Not to go too far off topic, but there are also a lot of these new DMs that go straight to the IDC pretty much right away. So now you have an instructor with less than a year of experience and 80% of the dives this person has done happened while taking or helping with a class.

This is similar to those IT people that take an MCSE bootcamp, get the certification(s), then come to work and I can't put them on anything because they have no idea what they are doing. All they know are test answers.

If you have to kneel on the bottom in order to deploy a light ... or take a compass heading ... or turn on your camera ... then you are not ready to become a DM.

However, there is absolutely nothing in DM training that would test you for those things, since every activity you'll be asked to do is allowed to begin by kneeling on the bottom ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[beester]

How about non commercial organisations like BSAC or CMAS affiliated agencies? These work on a volunteer-club basis, meaning that most of the instruction is done by volunteers as a hobby with a day-job instead of commercial instructors.

This inherently as some consequences, both positive and negative...

-Volunteer instruction: They will never be as good as good professional instructors (I'm using GUE as a reference here, but this includes all good and known professional tech instructors). They do this for a hobby and cannot fine-tune their diving skill and didactical skills as a pro who 's done 10000 dives in alot of different environments. However what you do know is that they teach for the love of the hobby, because they do it out of their own spare time. Most of it is done in local circumstances... and we all know that diving in alot of different situations makes good divers.
- Time: There is no zero-to-hero program because you need to invest alot of time yourself. You can't just call up an instructor and ask him to take this or this test out of the blue. You'll have to get together with likeminded people to organise instruction. I was one of the fastest CMAS *** divers in my local neighborhood (zero-to-hero) but this took 180 dives in a year and a half. CMAS **** took the best part of 3 years and another 300 dives.
- Diveleader vs instructor: As already stated (I think by Devon).. there are organisations who have a high end split between experience and teaching. BSAC has first class diver, CMAS has ****, etc. This is a non teaching certification that deals with general dive-organizing-leading-boating. There is no teaching involved. An analogy is like being an experienced IT pro without many people-skills becoming a teamlead or manager. It's not because you are the reference in your expertise that you can manage people or teach skills.
- Curriculum: the curriculum is not focused on becoming a pro but on becoming a self-reliant diver.

Does this mean that all is well on this side of the "agency-pond"? NO! I've also looked across the pond in other organisations (GUE, TDI... soon PADI), just to see how things are done differently and indeed some things are much better organised. Next to that you get alot of club-garbage that is part of the volunteer deal... instructors thinking they are the world... old dinosaurs teaching you a lesson... etc... but all in all it's a system that works on local level.

The main problem is that most new divers, who tasted the hobby in warm waters, in the hands of the main professional organisation, come out to us and expect to get a certification in 2 weekends. This causes a drain on volunteer instructors already putting up with alot.

 

[mathauck0814]

How much of it is due to the level being so "achievable". For instance - take a PGA certified Golf Pro. Try as you might, unless you can really play the game you're just not going to get certified and you're just not going to get a job. This is certainly true in the upper levels of the ski industry as well (though there are more than a few uncertified kids instructors out there pretending, so maybe that's a bad example). Someone used the sailing example earlier.

Maybe the issue is that the bar is set so low that people can achieve it - thus the answer is that people are doing so in this sport simply because they CAN, whereas in other activities the standard is much, much higher?

 

[agilis]

To qualify for freefall skydiving (a jump from 14,000 feet with about a minute of freefall before deploying the chute) requires a couple of static line jumps and at least one tandem jump in close proximity to an instructor. After that, you are on your own, good to go. That's it.

Most of this 'go pro' attitude is marketing driven appeals to childish fantasy images. I saw a DM at a resort recently, an American, strutting around the beach bar with his dive knife strapped to his leg, hands on hips, gazing with steely-eyed resolve at the sea. "What an a--hole" a young woman whispered to her companion.

Back when I used to skydive, a very experienced instructor did not open his chute after jumping from the plane. The chute was intact and in good working order when it was removed from the body, so we can only guess at what happened. He hit flat, face down, and made a hole two feet deep when he landed on someone's lawn in a Toms River retirement community. I remember that the residents of Holiday City were very upset. This was a long time ago, and I don't skydive these days. The dynamics were very different. I never saw any posturing and pretense, unlike scuba, which fairly reeks of it.

 

[James R]

I never saw any posturing and pretense, unlike scuba, which fairly reeks of it.

I would think that's because it's a heck of a lot easier to get someone to scuba dive than put their knees in the breeze. With scuba you can likely get away with being a squirrel a lot more often than you can under a canopy. I have never done a "civilian" parachute jump, but I have a 67 jumps while serving in the military -- mostly at night with a ridiculous amount of gear. Not everyone who wants to do this can hack it. Those who do don't need to posture or boast about it. The wings on the uniform are enough.