Like most have said here it is what your teacher makes it. When I did my AOW, in addition to the NAUI standards, I requested some other skills. I was just getting into diving a BP/W and long hose so we did some long hose drills, valve drills, bag shooting... things I wanted to learn and practice for Tech. So we did it. Other than that... You need it to progress with training (in most cases) and when diving with charters and stuff. My buddy and I had to sign a waver in Thailand cos we didn't have AOW cards. The DM was afraid to take us diving... even more afraid when we whipped out the long-hoses LOL. Funny thing was... we schooled the DM. He had just started diving a few months before and fast tracked to DM. SO... point here is, it's not what cards you hold, it's how you are trained and what skills you have. Nun chuck skills, computer hacking skills, bow-staff skills.. you know SKILLS.