First of all a warning for those who do not enjoy long posts, this one may not be for you.
I have been a long time reader and lurker of these boards but I have recently had an experience that made me want to post and voice some opinions on the differences between certification and training in the scuba diving community.
A bit of background...in junior high school, I was involved in track and field as a high jumper. I was fairly good for my age and as such was invited to try out for a competition track meet of elite level junior high talent. This meet was not open to anyone and as such had minimum standards to qualify for the event. In my event of high jumping a minimum height had to be cleared a week before the track meet, in order to qualify for a spot in the competition.
I very much wanted to be included in this elite level competition, so I trained hard. Every day after school I would set bar at the required qualification height and practice until I could clear it every time. I felt confident and cocky. The week before the meet my hard work paid off as I easily cleared the required height and qualified for the competition.
I went into the track meet full of confidence. My confidence soon turned to dismay however as I placed dead last. Afterwards my father sat down with me and had a conversation with me that changed my attitude towards many things in life. I had set my eyes on the minimum standard. I had trained and achieved a qualification to attend an elite level track meet and stopped there. I did not raise the bar as others in that competition had clearly done. My father wisely stated if you do not raise the bar, how will you ever know how high you can go.
How does this relate to scuba diving? For the last couple years I have been helping out with scuba certification classes as a NAUI assistant instructor. Recently there was a student who wanted to participate in a NAUI master diver class that my supervising instructor was offering. As this particular student had been in other classes (advanced and rescue) that we had offered we knew him quite well. Both of us were of the opinion that this student was not ready for the course. We told him politely that perhaps he was not ready for the course and offered him some extra pool time to help him be ready for the next one. Well he blew up. He was furious, after all he argued, he did have the bare minimum amount of dives required by NAUI to take the class, and had the minimum amount of skills. In the end we still maintained that despite the fact he meet NAUIs minimum requirement (just barely) we felt he would be better served to wait a bit and hone the skills he just learned in his previous rescue class.
The instructor at the store is a very nice and generous person and offered this student some extra pool time free of charge to help him get ready for the next Masters class, which he reluctantly accepted. I was asked to come along to observe my instructor and help out where I could. At the pool we told this student that we wanted to start practising with him some basic out of air drills. Once again this student was furious stating that such basic open water skills were beneath him as a rescue diver and he already knew how to do them. Predictably, once we got him to demonstrate his evidently superior open water skills to us, it was apparent that they were lacking. This student, as I was in my youth obsessed with meeting the minimum standards and was failing with that approach as miserably as I failed at the track meet.
What is my long winded point? Certification is the minimum standard. Many scuba divers believe that once they meet this certification then the process is over. They are more concerned with the certification rather than the training. In university, several of my fellow class mates lived by the slogan Cs and Ds equal degrees. In that all they had to do was meet the minimum standard and they would reap the full benefits of a University degree.
When I first started scuba diving 7 years ago, I was immediately in love with the sport. I wanted to learn the sport, not just to achieve a certification, but because I was sincerely interested in the subject. I did not want to just be able to pass off the minimum required skills, I wanted to master them. I did not jump to the next level of certification as soon as I had the bare minimum or required dives or pre-requisite training, rather I waited until I truly felt that I had not only learned, but mastered and practised the skills presented in the previous course.
Currently I have been an assistant instructor for 2 years and have assisted in numerous open water classes. My supervising instructor tells me I have been ready to make the jump to a full instructor and take a full instructor training course for a long time. I however am not sure I agree. When I do go to that next step, I do not want to be just another dive instructor, I want to be a good one. Like people as Jim Lap, and Grateful Diver and others on this board appear to be. I want to be coming at the course from a position of experience and although I have about 250 dives and 7 years diving experience plus 2 years of assistant instruction experience I am not sure if I have enough behind me to fully show that I can walk the walk as well as I can talk the talk. I do not want to be an instructor who is teaching who he himself has only met the required minimum amount of dives and diving experience. When I make the jump to being a full instructor, I want to be sure that I will be a great one, one of true quality with the proper amount of real experience to back me up.
I feel that the dive community and society in general would be much better served if people were more concerned with getting actual training and learning rather than just getting certified.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading.
I have been a long time reader and lurker of these boards but I have recently had an experience that made me want to post and voice some opinions on the differences between certification and training in the scuba diving community.
A bit of background...in junior high school, I was involved in track and field as a high jumper. I was fairly good for my age and as such was invited to try out for a competition track meet of elite level junior high talent. This meet was not open to anyone and as such had minimum standards to qualify for the event. In my event of high jumping a minimum height had to be cleared a week before the track meet, in order to qualify for a spot in the competition.
I very much wanted to be included in this elite level competition, so I trained hard. Every day after school I would set bar at the required qualification height and practice until I could clear it every time. I felt confident and cocky. The week before the meet my hard work paid off as I easily cleared the required height and qualified for the competition.
I went into the track meet full of confidence. My confidence soon turned to dismay however as I placed dead last. Afterwards my father sat down with me and had a conversation with me that changed my attitude towards many things in life. I had set my eyes on the minimum standard. I had trained and achieved a qualification to attend an elite level track meet and stopped there. I did not raise the bar as others in that competition had clearly done. My father wisely stated if you do not raise the bar, how will you ever know how high you can go.
How does this relate to scuba diving? For the last couple years I have been helping out with scuba certification classes as a NAUI assistant instructor. Recently there was a student who wanted to participate in a NAUI master diver class that my supervising instructor was offering. As this particular student had been in other classes (advanced and rescue) that we had offered we knew him quite well. Both of us were of the opinion that this student was not ready for the course. We told him politely that perhaps he was not ready for the course and offered him some extra pool time to help him be ready for the next one. Well he blew up. He was furious, after all he argued, he did have the bare minimum amount of dives required by NAUI to take the class, and had the minimum amount of skills. In the end we still maintained that despite the fact he meet NAUIs minimum requirement (just barely) we felt he would be better served to wait a bit and hone the skills he just learned in his previous rescue class.
The instructor at the store is a very nice and generous person and offered this student some extra pool time free of charge to help him get ready for the next Masters class, which he reluctantly accepted. I was asked to come along to observe my instructor and help out where I could. At the pool we told this student that we wanted to start practising with him some basic out of air drills. Once again this student was furious stating that such basic open water skills were beneath him as a rescue diver and he already knew how to do them. Predictably, once we got him to demonstrate his evidently superior open water skills to us, it was apparent that they were lacking. This student, as I was in my youth obsessed with meeting the minimum standards and was failing with that approach as miserably as I failed at the track meet.
What is my long winded point? Certification is the minimum standard. Many scuba divers believe that once they meet this certification then the process is over. They are more concerned with the certification rather than the training. In university, several of my fellow class mates lived by the slogan Cs and Ds equal degrees. In that all they had to do was meet the minimum standard and they would reap the full benefits of a University degree.
When I first started scuba diving 7 years ago, I was immediately in love with the sport. I wanted to learn the sport, not just to achieve a certification, but because I was sincerely interested in the subject. I did not want to just be able to pass off the minimum required skills, I wanted to master them. I did not jump to the next level of certification as soon as I had the bare minimum or required dives or pre-requisite training, rather I waited until I truly felt that I had not only learned, but mastered and practised the skills presented in the previous course.
Currently I have been an assistant instructor for 2 years and have assisted in numerous open water classes. My supervising instructor tells me I have been ready to make the jump to a full instructor and take a full instructor training course for a long time. I however am not sure I agree. When I do go to that next step, I do not want to be just another dive instructor, I want to be a good one. Like people as Jim Lap, and Grateful Diver and others on this board appear to be. I want to be coming at the course from a position of experience and although I have about 250 dives and 7 years diving experience plus 2 years of assistant instruction experience I am not sure if I have enough behind me to fully show that I can walk the walk as well as I can talk the talk. I do not want to be an instructor who is teaching who he himself has only met the required minimum amount of dives and diving experience. When I make the jump to being a full instructor, I want to be sure that I will be a great one, one of true quality with the proper amount of real experience to back me up.
I feel that the dive community and society in general would be much better served if people were more concerned with getting actual training and learning rather than just getting certified.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading.
