Personally, I feel the deep diver course is a load - assuming you are diving w/ padi anyway (and I am as well, so I'm somewhat justified in this). The deep class is kind of a joke....
In the nitrox class, you will actually *learn* something. Partial pressures, max depths, those kinds of things.
AOW class won't teach you a whole lot - it just a quick skimming over of different types of dives. It's more of an advertisement for future classes than anything, but it does get you diving in a wide variety of conditions under the supervison of an instructor, and the book is good.
As far as rushing it goes...depends on your skill kindof. I did my aow w/ (checking log book...) with 25 dives under my belt. For me, I felt it was enough.
Do you feel comfortable with your skills? Are you a decent diver? Then heck yeah, go for it. But if you're not, just practice a little.
Most of all, enjoy it. AOW was fun. Got to play with a camera, search and recovery is just a blast, and i always like diving deep. I unfortunately didn't get to do the night dive in my class, but i made up for it soon enough with a few other night dives =)