If your instructor really wanted to help you improve he'd forget trying to sell you the AOW class and just invite you to come and dive with him or her if you have an issue finding buddies. I tell all of my OW students that they are welcome to tag along on any dives I am doing that are within the level of their training and experience. If I'm with students I'll do my best to make sure they show up at the site and have someone else to dive with. That is usually not hard because if I know they are coming I'll pick a site where there is usually someone else looking for a buddy. Since I teach small classes I'll also buddy them up with a student on checkouts so the student has a buddy and the newly minted diver gets to practice their skills all over. I make sure it's within ratios.
I wrote an book on Advanced or AOW level training, including when to consider it, why, and what should come before in terms of skills you should have before starting the AOW class. I want my students to take a Rescue class before AOW. The primary reason for this is that Rescue will go a long ways towards increasing your situational awareness and many operations now use the AOW card as a way to reduce their liability and put people on sites they really have no business diving.
I've seen numerous AOW divers put on dives and sites where they were completely unprepared for the conditions and didn't have the ability to assess that. I expect an AOW course to prepare divers for the types of dives they may have access to along with the increased risks. Before I allow a diver I did not train for OW to take an AOW class they need to demonstrate good buoyancy and trim, basic skills neutral and horizontal, and excellent buddy skills.
The AOW class is not the place to remediate basic skills from the OW class. It's to teach new skills and knowledge. As long as that AOW card is going to get you access to say, the Speigel Grove, you need to know how to plan that dive with the right amount of gas, know what to do if you get blown off the wreck, know how to assist a fellow diver, and at the same time hear the captain say "there's a 2 knot current down there" and decide on your own that you're not ready for that yet and call the dive.
AOW should not just be more experience with an instructor. That's a poor reason to take the class. If you want more experience with a pro, just ask to dive with one. No class, no fees (maybe you buy them lunch or pay the entry fee to a quarry for them), and no pressure to do things. Just dive and relax. If your basic skills are not solid, don't take another class to build on them. Remember the old adage about building on sand rather than rock.
If you feel you must take a class to improve on something right out of OW, you probably didn't get what you paid for in the OW class. There's a common belief that I feel is used as an excuse for poor basic training. That belief is that "the OW card is a license to learn."
It's not. That card says that you have learned. According to the RSTC, that card says you now have the ablility to plan, execute, and safely return from a dive with a buddy of equal training and experience with no professional present. If you can't do that or feel uneasy about it, you should not have been given the card. As the student you do have a responsibility to express that unease to the instructor and they have a moral and ethical responsibility to do whatever it takes to address that at no additional cost to you.
When I certify a student, before I give them the card I ask myself two questions.
1. Would I dive with this person if I wasn't an instructor?
2. Would I allow my loved one to dive with them without me present and know that they would be ok and taken care of if something happened?
The answer to both of those has to be yes or they don't get the card. In order to do that I ask them point blank, "would you feel comfortable coming here next week or in two weeks and diving with your classmate or another of my students if I wasn't here?" If they were to hesitate or tell me they are unsure, I'd ask why and then we'd decide what to do. If that meant doing a couple more dives with me, ok fine. We'd schedule a time and get a couple more dives in. I certainly would not tell them to sign up for another class. That's just being greedy.
I wrote an book on Advanced or AOW level training, including when to consider it, why, and what should come before in terms of skills you should have before starting the AOW class. I want my students to take a Rescue class before AOW. The primary reason for this is that Rescue will go a long ways towards increasing your situational awareness and many operations now use the AOW card as a way to reduce their liability and put people on sites they really have no business diving.
I've seen numerous AOW divers put on dives and sites where they were completely unprepared for the conditions and didn't have the ability to assess that. I expect an AOW course to prepare divers for the types of dives they may have access to along with the increased risks. Before I allow a diver I did not train for OW to take an AOW class they need to demonstrate good buoyancy and trim, basic skills neutral and horizontal, and excellent buddy skills.
The AOW class is not the place to remediate basic skills from the OW class. It's to teach new skills and knowledge. As long as that AOW card is going to get you access to say, the Speigel Grove, you need to know how to plan that dive with the right amount of gas, know what to do if you get blown off the wreck, know how to assist a fellow diver, and at the same time hear the captain say "there's a 2 knot current down there" and decide on your own that you're not ready for that yet and call the dive.
AOW should not just be more experience with an instructor. That's a poor reason to take the class. If you want more experience with a pro, just ask to dive with one. No class, no fees (maybe you buy them lunch or pay the entry fee to a quarry for them), and no pressure to do things. Just dive and relax. If your basic skills are not solid, don't take another class to build on them. Remember the old adage about building on sand rather than rock.
If you feel you must take a class to improve on something right out of OW, you probably didn't get what you paid for in the OW class. There's a common belief that I feel is used as an excuse for poor basic training. That belief is that "the OW card is a license to learn."
It's not. That card says that you have learned. According to the RSTC, that card says you now have the ablility to plan, execute, and safely return from a dive with a buddy of equal training and experience with no professional present. If you can't do that or feel uneasy about it, you should not have been given the card. As the student you do have a responsibility to express that unease to the instructor and they have a moral and ethical responsibility to do whatever it takes to address that at no additional cost to you.
When I certify a student, before I give them the card I ask myself two questions.
1. Would I dive with this person if I wasn't an instructor?
2. Would I allow my loved one to dive with them without me present and know that they would be ok and taken care of if something happened?
The answer to both of those has to be yes or they don't get the card. In order to do that I ask them point blank, "would you feel comfortable coming here next week or in two weeks and diving with your classmate or another of my students if I wasn't here?" If they were to hesitate or tell me they are unsure, I'd ask why and then we'd decide what to do. If that meant doing a couple more dives with me, ok fine. We'd schedule a time and get a couple more dives in. I certainly would not tell them to sign up for another class. That's just being greedy.
