Matt,
You should've have expected a bunch of naysayers on a thread like this one. Remember, many "dive professionals" are ticked because it only takes like two months and a few thousand dollars to get to their level of certification (but not their level of experience). Teaching recreational diving is kind of like a blue collar, skilled trade type of sport, and there's really only the bare minimum of requirements to do any of it. So the people who actually take it seriously get ticked when someone runs up behind them and gets as qualified as they are. This is why being a scuba instructor means very little money and in many cases, varying degrees of people taking you seriously. Do what you want, who cares what anyone says. If this were that serious of a matter, you would need to go to a special school to learn it, like say a college for example. You don't see people running off to Roatan to get their PhD for three grand. Then of course, dive agencies wouldn't be able to make millions by certifying every schlep that comes their way as a DM, instructor, etc. That's just diving.
