Taking Dive classes to learn, should i go with master diver or dive master

[Lorenzoid]

You're "in school for accounting." After you have been diving for a while, you will begin to sense the cost vs. benefits of the various courses that are offered. The more you dive, the more you will realize which courses are good value and which are a waste of money. The biggest waste of money would be to sign up in advance for a $2500 package of courses. After a few dozen more dives, take the Rescue course, which just about everyone says is the course that was most "worth it." As you gain more experience diving, you will discover that your air consumption rate has been steadily decreasing, and your dive time is being limited more by your no-decompression limits than by your air supply. At that point, you can extend your dive times by taking the Nitrox course. By that time, you will have developed a sense of whether taking further "specialties" is worth it to you.

 

[DivemasterDennis]

Plus 1 for going diving. Competence and confidence come with experience, not with piles of plastic cards. After you engage in about 100 more dives, evaluate your areas of interest and pursue classes in them., You may end up interested in technical diving and rebreathers, or just taking pretty pictures. Go dive, a bunch, and then you can answer your own questions more competently than anyone else ever could.
DivemasterDennis

 

[lv2dive]

People on SB always recommend "go diving" and while I certainly agree with that (especially over taking a dive master class at your experience level) sometimes it is not quite that simple. There *is* also something to be said for getting experience by taking classes, especially if one does not have a regular dive buddy. I would rather not dive if I don't know that I can count on my buddy.

There was a time in my diving history where I got a lot of experience through taking classes. I met a lot of people and improved my skills, all while diving with instructors I trusted and respected. And along the way, as I developed relationships and built experience, it became easier to take the advice to "just dive."

 

[00wabbit]

If you are really detail oriented something more like Intro to Tech or Gue Fundamentals would be better.

I took intro to tech and it was the best class I had so far. I learned proper trim (not just "good enough" trim) A variety of different kick styles for different environments. Real emergency procedures. I also learend how to do the math myself to calculate how much gas I need to ascend from different depths, and how much I need to safely conduct a dive. *Hint* A lot of times it's more than just be back on the boat with 500psi.

I wouldn't worry with the Master Diver program. If you really want to learn start finding out where the best instructors are and go to them. Don't worry about what agency they teach.

Also like everyone else said - just go dive. Dive with people better than you. Watch them diving. Ask them questions, ask them to evaluate you. Practice, Practice, Practice. For me every dive is a practice dive. I always have something I want to be better at. At the moment it is back kicking and staying horizontal on ascents. So when I am diving around a site I practice my back kicks to hold position. When ascending I try to stay horizontal and use my back kick to hold position in front of the upline. Once I feel more comfortable with that I will work on something else.

 

[Colliam7]

I just got OW certified in april and AOW last week. I . . . don't plan on ever using my dive training to make a living. I . . . love to get into the meat of what I am into and want to know as much as i can about diving. . . . I don't know whether I should go for a master diver certification or dive master certification. . . . the dive shop offers master diver certification for $2500. it includes AOW, rescue, emergency, five specialties, three boat charters and/or springs entrance fees, and the application. Is this a reasonable price?

I love reading posts from newer divers, who show the kind of enthusiasm you clearly exhibited in your comments. May that enthusiasm 'live long and prosper'! Mine has, and I only wish I started diving as a young person.

The path to becoming a 'serious' diver - not a dive professional, rather someone who takes diving seriously, who enjoys continually improving their skills, who establishes personal standards, and sets personal goals, for themselves, and who sees every dive as an opportunity to learn something new - is not exclusively based on taking more classes. Think of courses you have taken in your accounting curriculum that were, if not a waste of time, merely 'tastefully' understated' in content and value. NOR is becoming a serious diver exclusively based on diving more - if you learned bad habits in OW, or AOW (not saying you did, BTW), one thing you may well do by simply diving more is reinforce those bad habits, through diving more. Or, if you didn't learn something in OW, or AOW, there is no reason to believe that the learning will spontaneously occur simply by diving more - an intellectual 'immaculate conception' is not a predictable outcome of 'diving more'. What additional training will do is expand your vision and awareness of how much (more) there is to learn, and additional diving will expand your confidence, which allows you to focus more on extending your skills as basic diving becomes second nature - basic diving becomes a program running in the background, while your primary processor is running programs involving new skill development.

Master Scuba Diver vs DM
I completed the requirements for Master Scuba Diver, but I did so as something of a speed competition with my dive buddy. I learned something from each of the specialties I completed, but that had nothing to do with submitting paperwork for the Master Scuba Diver designation, although I accrued some personal satisfaction from winning the competition. I do, nonetheless, endorse the concept of taking additional specialty courses, because you can often learn specific skills / techniques / procedures more efficiently in a focused class than on your own. I took Divemaster to improve my personal dive skills - I had NO INTENTION of ever working as a dive professional (I, too, never wanted to use my dive training to make a living, and I am proud to say I have been conspicuously successful in reaching that goal) - and DM did help me do just that. So, I see DM as a possible course both for the diver who wants to work / teach in the recreational diving industry, as well as for divers who don't. But, I will also say that as an accidental instructor - something I never really planned on, it just worked out that way - I have learned an enormous amount from teaching as well. While completing DM, I also completed tec training. And, that was possibly the single most beneficial coursework I have ever completed. All roads may not lead to Rome, but there are many, different roads that do.

Packaged education
I am somewhat skeptical of the value of packages such as you describe. Frankly, I think $2500 sounds like a lot of money for what appears to be included. But, I don't have first hand knowledge of the operation, or the instructional staff, so the value may well be there. Before going down that path, I would want to ask A LOT of very detailed questions, about what specialties would be included, about what skills would be acquired, about what unique value you would accrue from that particular package, that you could not get through training elsewhere, or through pursuit of individual specialties. I am not very big of agency-specific chest thumping, either. I have seen good, and bad, instruction across agencies. Just because the putative content of a course is good does not guarantee that the course will be valuable. It is still worth knowing something about the instructor(s), and even getting references from previous students. But, ultimately, in predicting the outcome of an educational process, two statistically significant independent variables are the motivation and the preparation of the leaner.

 

[fnfalman]

Master Diver certification means nothing and the training to get it is minimal.

Dive Master is a professional certification. If you have zero interest in making a living or making money off diving then don't bother.

You can get all sorts of good training without having a "certification" or "title".

 

[C Dub]

Hi Alicia. I'm newly certified, and am in the exact same boat. I love studying all the details too. I bet you read scubaboard obsessively like I do, right? Anyway, here is my plan, in order:
1. Get Nitrox - done.
2. Do AOW. I got certified in Maui, so I'm not that familiar with the diving here in SoCal, which includes large cattle boats, shore dives, wreck dives, and Catalina. In the AOW I'll get a nice introduction to all of them, with an experienced instructor. Starting next week.
3. Dive more.
4. Get Rescue Diver, as I'd like to do some volunteer diving at the Aquarium which requires it.
5. Dive Dive Dive.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I just got OW certified in april and AOW last week. I am in school for accounting and don't plan on ever using my dive training to make a living. I am a detail oriented person that is curious by nature and love to get into the meat of what I am into and want to know as much as i can about diving. I know that having the certification is just a piece of paper and it matters more what you learn. with that being said, I don't know whether I should go for a master diver certification or dive master certification. one of the instructors with the dive shop I go through said I should just go for the dive master training because it would let me work, but I want to know if the information I learn is worth the price and time. Like i said, i don't plan on using it to make a living. Also, the dive shop offers master diver certification for $2500. it includes AOW, rescue, emergency, five specialties, three boat charters and/or springs entrance fees, and the application. Is this a reasonable price?

I usually advise my students not to jump from class to class to class ... but to take a class and then go diving. Only sign up for the next class when you feel that your knowledge and skills are starting to hold you back from the dives you want to do, because by then you'll have a pretty fair idea of what classes you will get the most benefit from taking.

$2500 is an awful lot of money to spend for classes at your level. My advice would be to spend that money on equipment and dive trips. Join a dive club, find a more experienced dive buddy who's willing to mentor you, and go diving. You'll get way more out of your diving budget that way.

The only class I'd highly recommend at your level is Rescue. That class is as much about teaching you how to stay out of trouble as it is about what to do when you get into trouble ... and therefore it has a lot of value to the newer diver. If you want to learn more about diving, there are numerous resources that are a lot less expensive than a $2500 program whose main objective is to get you a bunch of certification cards. Many people who go that route come out of it disappointed, and feeling like they didn't learn anything. This isn't unexpected because it's tough to focus on new things while you're still struggling to master the things you learned in the last class.

Slow down ... go diving ... take classes at a measured pace, and only when you feel completely comfortable with the skills and knowledge from the last class. Nobody "masters" anything during a class ... you only learn how to do it. Mastery comes from repetition, and that comes from getting out and going diving.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[TSandM]

Colliam put it beautifully. It's wonderful to be enthusiastic and want to learn -- I love people like that. But there are many avenues to competence in diving, and classes are only one of them, and not always the best or most cost-effective.

At the risk of sounding incredibly jaundiced, I will offer that many shops make a strong effort to encourage their students into the divemaster program. This is for a raft of reasons, few of which are beneficial to the student. The income to a shop for putting a student through all the prerequisites and the divemaster program itself is significant. Divemaster candidates (and often the DMs themselves) do a lot of volunteer work that the shop would otherwise have to pay for. And it's useful for a shop to advertise low student: staff ratios. But unless you are truly interested in helping out with classes and doing unpaid work, divemaster is not the direction you should head. It's not a class in being a better diver; it's a class in being a better demonstrator, and how to be a dutiful and respectful assistant.

On the other hand, just diving can ingrain bad habits very quickly. Unless you get feedback that changes your technique, you may not actually be improving. I know, when I was green, I simply didn't know enough to know which things I was doing were bad, or to diagnose why I was doing them or how to stop. I was lucky enough to fall under the influence of a wonderful, more experienced diver (NW Grateful Diver here on SB) who undertook to unravel my problems and help me fix them. This is a wonderful way to learn, combining experience with feedback. But not everybody is as lucky as I was, to find such a mentor.

Con Ed classes can be a good way to improve, if you take the right classes from the right people. I would never sign up for a package like the one you were offered, because I might find out I wanted to take MY photography class from someone who was recommended by somebody I met at a dive site, for example. You might go diving with someone whose skills you admire, and have them tell you to take a class from an entirely different agency or instructor than you had previously considered (as happened to me).

So, the bottom line from me is to mix diving experience and carefully chosen continuing education classes, picking your instructors carefully. Don't even think about "Going Pro" until you've been diving for several years, have a couple hundred dives under your belt, and find yourself wanting to guide or help teach.

 

[Texasguy]

Worthwhile certs to get:
- Solo (at some later time when you'll feel confident) (though, get SDI - not PADI, PADI's self reliant is not as widely accepted)
- Nitrox - A MUST for traveling
- (maybe) Drysuit (so you could rent one if needed)
- (maybe) Deep Diver, as a cert it makes no sense, everywhere you'd be allowed to dive the same depth if you have AOW. It is a fun cert but, in my personal view, useless - unless specifically required by someone. It would make more sense to get it if you have OW but not AOW, then, you could claim you can dive that deep as AOW allows.
- Navigation, as a new diver you do go over this in AOW and Rescue but it never hurts to take it again and again - unless you can practice by yourself.

Classes to take:
- Rescue - it is a so so class for diving. Not much diving teaching, more like how to save someone or, maybe, not to get in trouble yourself. I'd get a solo cert instead. Rescue does open doors to more advanced training but one can dive without one. Rescue was the most boring class EVER, and I love diving. While it is nice to know how to save people, the class was just the most boring pile of crap I ever taken. I can still taste it.

Then instead of going to professional and spending your money unwisely - that is if you don't plan to teach, do a tech branch of diving (the art of diving deeper). This will satisfy that curiosity that you have for diving.

Technology/style to discover:
- Solo diving
- Sidemount
- Drysuit
- Scooters