Gear & Training Priorities for broke college student

[LostTrail61]

IMHO, get more bottom time and experience. As tmassey stated, find a mentor, someone experienced you get along with, trust, that can help you get comfortable in the water. Work on the basic skills until they become muscle memory. Gain additional skills, watch the people you dive with, ask questions, be a sponge. Gear will come, but as expensive as dive gear can get, try before you buy so when you do buy, you're buying what you want and will serve your needs for a while.

 

[TMHeimer]

If your buoyancy is OK and improving you may not need the PPB. I assume the other specialties (Wreck, Night, etc.) are relevant to the type of diving you'll do. Of course we all agree everyone should take Rescue. What is a $50 pond dive? Sounds like something I would never do. If all that's available, I would do a free pond dive.

 

[OTF]

Go do as much local diving as you can to build experience. Depending on your major you may be able to do some diving/training paid for partially or fully by the school or other organizations. maybe even in warm places. look into the types of programs that do research or reef restoration.

Does your school have a dive club?

 

[Hartattack]

Hi OP, and welcome to diving.
First and foremost, find yourself a good community of like-minded divers. I help run a group in your area called Midwest Underwater Explorers. (find us on Facebook) We have all kinds of events happening in the Midwest area and would be more than happy to have you join us. With that said, don't worry too much about gear for right now. We have plenty of gear for you to try out if you like. With that said, we are GUE divers, so we stick to their standard gear configuration E.g. Back Plate and Wing w/ a long hose (we would be happy to show you how it works)

Next up would be moving on from community events to a GUE Fundamentals Course of instruction; we have a skills workshop tomorrow at Mermet Springs and another in April on the schedule. We help prepare students for this course and work with you as much as we can to get you ready for a Rec or Tec pass depending on the type of diving you are doing. Many of us are Tech, Cave, CCR certified and we also have GUE Instructors and Interns that would be more than willing to help you on your diving goals.

Nevertheless, feel free to PM me, and I can get you squared away with the group. Cheers!

 

[decompression]

If you want to progress and make the most of your money you’ll have to ensure the fundamentals are solid. In advanced courses you’ll be better served by being able to focus on the new info and skills rather than be distracted by your basic abilities.

This can turn frustration and longer course times into success and confidence.

The best path to ensure your basics are where they should be I highly recommend initial training through UTD or GUE. Their essentials or fundamentals courses lay the foundation for maximizing knowledge and skills. You do not have to continue with them, although many do, but any follow on courses will be far more valuable.


I would highly recommend contacting James Mott as he is in your general area.

James Mott | UTD Scuba Diving

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Be very careful where you spend your money. You can pay a lot for a number of short con ed courses and not grow as a diver. You can spend $$$ on a single intensive, multi-day class like GUE fundies or UTD essentials, and grow like crazy (I believe that if you don't have nitrox certification, you will get it as part of these courses). The return on your dollar is much higher, but you have to swallow that one time cost. I am not an instructor for either agency, never will be, but recommend their programs due to the high standards and pretty much guarantee of skills improvement. You can find good instructors outside of those agencies of course, but likely they passed through one of them.

 

[ginti]

What should my priorities be in terms of training? AOW and EANx obviously, Night, Deep, Nav, PPB, Wreck, Drysuit, Rescue...I understand the need for a very strong foundation in fundamental skills before I start doing tec courses, but what is the cost-benefit per annum of doing 100 30ft platform dives in a quarry versus 4-5 NDL wreck dives in Lake Huron? Should I be going on those $50 pond dives or should I be saving up for a drysuit?

I would do none of the courses you mentioned. I would go for GUE fundies and after a pass, I would start thinking about how to continue. An alternative would be UTD essentials. In both these cases, be sure that you have some local buddies, otherwise it can be hard to progress. Also, if you like GUE, you need to do the fundies if you want to continue with tec-training, crossover is possible only with instructor evaluator... it can be complicated (I believe that UTD accepts the fundies card from GUE)

Another alternative is to find a very good instructor. Your problem, at this stage, is that you do not know what you do not know, so to find a high-quality instructor is gonna be hard.

What should my priorities be in terms of gear? I can't go out and buy a Shearwater yet but at the same time I don't want to buy a whole bunch of redundant gear that will end up in the closet. Should I even bother with a computer at all or just dive tables? Should I get singles regs or just rent them until I get onto doubles-whenever that may be?

I would save money and rent equipment. By renting equipment you can test different kind of products and develop experience. Buy only those piece of equipment that you are not willing to rent for personal reasons and the ones that must fit you perfectly (the mask).

Many will disagree on this

And how do these interact with each other-is it better to do a bunch of dives <60FFW but with a new computer, or go down to 140 and get a deep card but on tables? How much use is an AOW card if you don't dive on it the rest of the year, and so on?

I prefer the tables because you will get used to dive planning, but it's really personal here.

 

[Divrtim]

Get the Nitrox training!!! You can never go wrong with training=experience. Stuff comes and goes....