Choosing a IDC center to GoPro

[mralperem]

Hi guys currently i have a open water certificate and 4 logged dive. Its been nearly 2 years that i obtained that certificate and since than i always wanted to gopro and making scuba diving a lifestyle. I have been talking with some diving school. But i am still so confused about choosing the the dive school. The below are the schools i have talked. Can you guys would say that to go that one and why? Or do you have any other suggestion?

www.coralpointdiving.com

www.malapascua-diving.com

Ban's Diving Resort, Koh Tao - Official website

Koh Tao Diving | Crystal Dive - Thailand Scuba Diving

http://www.utiladivecenter.com/

For me the crystal dive and utilacenter seems very good but thing with utilacenter is that people say that honduras is not safe. But both of them has a good price from open water to IDC+MSDT. But i would love to know what are u guys thinking

 

[CAPTAIN SINBAD]

IMHO, what makes a good instructor is not as much about where you got your certification but what kind of diving experience are you bringing to the table? No offense but some of the absolute worst instructors I have had in my life were the ones who got their certification exactly the way you are looking to get. They had very little real diving experience so they would stand there and read from the book!!!

Imagine that you have 150 dives and you are teaching a Deep Diving Specialty course to a student who has 300 dives and can swim around you in circles! What possible value can you add to this person's learning experience besides reading from the book?

Some of the best diving instructors I have had in my life were actually technical divers themselves or tech instructors with plenty of real world experience under their belts. If I asked questions whose answers were not in the book, I would never get the reply "That is outside the scope of this course!" Rarely would I come across a situation in diving that these folks had not encountered sometime in their own lives. Believe me, as a student you can tell if the instructor knows his stuff or if he/she is reading from the book to get you through the course.

There is a lot to diving than what any diver with 25 or even 100 dives is able to comprehend. My most honest suggestion would be to not place any deadlines on yourself at this point. Instead I would urge you to progress in your own training and to gain proficiency at every level before you progress on to the next. Once you have learned and implemented what you have learned in courses under various conditions, only then you are able to teach that to someone else.

When it is time for you to become an instructor, you will not have to ask questions like these. You will be in a position to answer them yourself for other people.

Good luck and dive safe!

 

[mralperem]

Thank you for your response. You are right about everything you have just mentioned. But the thing is that i have a small budget so i have two options. First of all i can choose to became a instructor with 100 logged dive than i can attend to local dives for free until i have gained enough confident and experinced to teach others and then i will look for a job. The other alternative is that ill dive with all of my money atm and then ill attend for IDC course but to do that i have to save up more money and this will take more time/year from my life and wont give me a much experince because in that case ill just pay up to my local company for dive and i wont see the inside of the indusrty so that why actually i need to choose the IDC center. But thank you for you inside share and i would be really happy if you can give me a idea about the IDC centers as well

 

[CAPTAIN SINBAD]

Out of the places you have mentioned, I have only visited Utila Dive Center. I chose not to do my DM with them simply because they were PADI facility and I was looking to do Divemaster work for technical dive shops that were TDI or UTD affiliated. If PADI certification is what you are looking for then that may be a really good place.

Another thing to keep in mind is that if you plan on working where you live, then you might want to get training locally from the same shop where you will be working. I know a lot of shops that will only hire a Divemaster that they have trained themselves. This means that all the people who are flying out to those expensive and exotic places to get certified may actually be at a disadvantage when it comes to getting work locally.

I do understand your dilemma. I have been in a situation where I considered instructor certification because it promised "free paradise." Then I sat down and did some math I realized that it takes a lot of money to become an instructor and depending on where you are,the pay off may not be as much as you anticipated. Things like once you do become an instructor then the only diving that becomes "free" is pool work and local check out dives. If you are living right next to the ocean then the check out dives will be ocean dives. If you live where check out dives are happening in the quarry or some pond then you get to dive that quarry so many times that you will get sick of it.

I remember right after my Advanced Open Water, I had calculated the costs of diving vs the costs of becoming an instructor and the cost of three years of diving for me was the same as the cost of becoming an instructor! I figured that after a Zero to Hero instructor course, I will have a lot of free-pool and free quarry diving to enjoy while all my students who never chose to spend all this money on instructor card will be the ones doing some real ""fun" dives. It was not turning out to be as rosy and rewarding as I thought.

I don't know where you live and how much it would be costing you to get to the places you mentioned. I also do not know how close you are to local diving and how good is local diving. Without knowing these, I am assuming that if you have the funds to make an extended trip to anywhere in the world to become certified, the those funds can open up a lot of diving for you both locally as well as internationally to cheap destinations.

 

[Damselfish]

people say that honduras is not safe.

with regards to safety, mainland Honduras is a rather different thing than the Bay Islands.

With 4 dives a couple years ago I think you don't know what you don't know. (Anytime I see a new diver use the phrase "go pro" I suspect they are being guided too much by/falling for PADI marketing.) I suggest diving some more before even thinking about becoming a DM or instructor. And if you're on a tight budget, realize becoming an instructor is unlikely to help with that.

 

[AlexFindlay1984]

Also look at the SSI options - I know more than 50% of the dive centers on Koh Tao are SSI, which may put you off to a better start at a lower initial outlay. Check the instructor prices out

 

[Diving Dubai]

Taking a step back. Forget IDC centres at this moment.

If money is an issue, then the path to Instructor can be expensive.

First there is your basic training, AoW, Rescue, Probably Deep and Nitrox specialities. Not only the course prices, but e learning and or training material.

Then you need to pay for the dives to get the required number. For DM, then again e learning and Professional fees AND Insurance

By this point you really should own your own gear

For IDC, again, course fees e learning fees, the sundry items you will need as an instructor, then IDC exam fee the Professional and Insurance fees rise again

Certainly there are internships - Zero to Hero (OW - Instructor) but LOOK very carefully about what IS NOT included.

Then as a newly qualified instruct, you're still useless until you've practiced your teaching skills. The first 50 certs are the hardest where you really will learn how to teach.

Teaching full time, can be hard, it can ruin your enjoyment of diving. For sure you get fun days with great students, and enjoy a beer at sunset. But for the most part you're living out of a bag, with long hours and your day off is spent in bed catching up with sleep - and not all students provide a rewarding experience.

Trust me, by 100 dives you'll have a different outlook. By 1000 dives you'll look back at yourself with only 100 and realise how little you really knew at that time

 

[Damselfish]

OP has not been on board since posting this in 2017.

 

[Mark IV]

OP has not been on board since posting this in 2017.

he's probably a PADI course director by now