Well, first off, if I were to take your post at face value (and I will, for purposes of discussion), then two initial observations ...
1. Get yourself a different instructor. This one lost his cool, and that's never excusable when you have students in your charge. There is simply never ... ever ... a valid reason to call a student a "fu***** idiot".
2. Get yourself a new shop ... this one's doing a piss-poor job of planning classes, executing dives in a reasonable and prudent manner ... plus they seem to be rushing you through classes you don't appear to be prepared for yet.
See below ...
My experience is that I'm a relatively new diver, with about 25 dives. I have my Rescue Diver certification, consider myself proficient, aspire to be better with buoyancy, and just enrolled in DM class.
Agencies may say it's OK to begin a DM class with that few dives ... but if you're still working on basic things like buoyancy control, exactly how do you plan to take responsibility for people with even less experience than you?
Stop taking classes for a while, and just go diving. Get some real-world experience. You've apparently racked up most of your dives taking classes. Classes are great for learning things ... but they're an artificial environment. After each class you should take some time to just go diving and apply what you learned before moving on to the next class.
I have yet to meet a diver who's ready to begin DM training at 25 dives. They're just taking your money for a class you won't get a whole lot out of.
Sounds to me like you're dealing with a cert mill. Run away, before you end up hurting yourself.
I have previously dove in Lake Travis at Windy Point, but on a different platform at the site. To say the least, I don't care for Lake Travis because it's very dark and the viz sucks.
If you're planning to DM, you'd BETTER get comfortable diving there ... because as a DM you're going to not only have to deal with your own comfort level, but that of students. Being a DM isn't at all about dealing with your issues ... it's about dealing with theirs.
The plan for this dive was to go down to the first platform, hang out while the instructor helped with a OW class, and then descend to depth, do a few skills, come back up the chain and stairs, do some more skills and an extended safety stop. The dive team was the instructor, myself, and another student.
I'm not even sure that's within standards, but it's a really dumb idea. At a minimum you should be doing the deepest part of your dive first ... didn't they teach you that in OW class? They should have. But more importantly, combining classes with different objectives into a single dive sounds like a serious case of short-cutting to me ... something that's a serious indicator that you're dealing with a business that is more interested in profit than quality.
Find another shop ... this one's not on the instructor's shoulders, it's on the LDS owner's for allowing it to happen.
We dove to the platform, spent 25 minutes holding the edge of the platform and then after confirming okay began our dive. The instructor led, followed by the other student who was a lady, and me behind her. Travis is challenging for me and I was focusing on keeping my fins off the bottom (45 or so degree slope) and keeping up with my team. At 74 feet I had a problem with my ears. I couldn't equalize. My ears were hurting. I moved my light up and down across my buddy, to signal that I had a problem. Unfortunately she didn't stop, but I did. I stopped, turned vertical (from horizontal) and tried to equalize. No go. At this point I was separated and unable to equalize so I slowly ascended while trying to equalize.
Where was the instructor? At no time during this dive should you have been outside of the instructor's vision and control. That your buddy didn't stop says that she doesn't belong that deep, since she didn't even have the ability to keep track of her buddy.
What that says to me is that your buddy was so "focused" ... e.g. "tunnel vision" ... that she was incapable of paying attention to what was going on around her. That's an invitation to a diving accident. These are the sorts of issues you're supposed to have learned how to deal with BEFORE going deep.
After ascending about 15 feet I was able to equalize. At this point I was separated and I stayed put for about 30 seconds before deciding to slowly ascend to 15 feet, do a 3 minute safety stop, and surface to look for my teammates. At one point in my ascent I noticed bubbles and thought about descending, but decided against it because a) we don't dive alone, b) I have no idea who they were, c) the dive was aborted due to separation. When I surfaced none of my team members were there... so I swam to the swim steps and waited. A few minutes later the instructor surfaced.
Under the circumstances, you took the most prudent possible action ... despite that it boiled down to a making a choice between bad choices.
His first comment was "Your a F****ng Idiot, I'm not going down with you again, get out of the water". I responded with, "do you want to hear what happened?" To which the first statement was repeated. On our way back up to the picnic tables he repeated his tirade of calling me a F***NG idiot several more times. When we set our gear down I asked if we were scrubbing the rest of the day and he called me a F___NG idiot one more time.... at which point I lost my cool and ripped into him verbally for being unprofessional and acting like a 5 year old.
My guess is that he realized at depth he'd lost you, didn't have a clue where you went, and spent the entire ascent with all sorts of really bad scenarios going through his head. By the time he surfaced, he was too stressed to behave like a professional.
People are human, and make mistakes ... but if I had to guess, I'd say this guy probably got pushed through the same sequence of non-stop classes you are, and is completely unprepared to BE an instructor.
Now, I was wrong for losing my cool and I admit that. It's bad form for a diver to rip up an instructor in front of 2 divemasters, another instructor and 12 students of various levels. However, it's also bad form to cuss out a student.
Students are allowed to get stressed out ... part of any good class is finding a student's "buttons" and pushing them to stress the student. It's one way ... in many cases the best way ... to find out whether or not the student is mentally prepared for the conditions you're diving in.
An instructor is NOT allowed to get stressed out ... or at least, not to act on it. Besides being unprofessional, it shows a lack of capacity to deal with the kinds of problems that instructors typically have to deal with.
Not once did the instructor ask what happened, express any concern for my safety, or discuss what I did or did not do correctly.
That should have been his first response.
I spoke to another DM while I was putting my gear away and he said I had done the right thing in regards to the squeeze. I later spoke to the other instructor and he offered to finish the dives. I told him I was shook up from the confrontation and that it would be better if I just left. I didn't want to mess up everyone else's schedule (other students) and I was pissed off about being repeatedly insulted. Diving in a bad mood is a bad idea. (pun intended).
Another prudent decision ... there's always another day to dive.
I then spoke to the course director for about 2 hours. Most of the time he tried to pin it back on me telling me that I had endangered my buddy and that I should have gone back up the chain and stayed put. I feel that yes, I could have done things differently, but we had not discussed what to do if separated. Because a dive light was required and no discussion had been done I was operating under night dive rules which require aborting the dive if separated. My buddy was with the instructor and therefore not in immediate harm. I was the one who became separated because my buddy and the instructor did not see my signal that I had a problem.
You took a Deep Diving class that DIDN'T discuss what to do if separated?
The deeper you go, the more important such predive discussion becomes.
Makes me wonder what you DID discuss before attempting this dive.
I've emailed the shop owner, copied the course director, and copied the instructor and outlined that I think this is unacceptable. I've indicated that I won't do business with them if this isn't dealt with. I also attached a copy of the dive profile to my email (from the computer).
My expectation is that this is a QA issue and that the instructor should be referred to PADI QA by the shop. That would demonstrate to me that the shop values customer service, acknowledges the problem, and wants to make sure it doesn't happen again. I feel like it's my responsibility as a customer and diver to refer it to QA if the shop owner won't.
Don't wait for the shop owner to do anything ... it's pretty clear that all he's interested in is your money. If you haven't paid for that DM class yet, drop out and go find a reputable shop to take it with.
Then copy and paste your initial post and e-mail it to PADI QA ... please! If what you just posted is accurate, it's not a matter of "if" somebody's gonna get seriously hurt taking classes with this instructor ... it's a question of when it will happen.
Am I right here? This has shaken my trust of the instructors because I feel like there was an attempt to cover up behavior that shouldn't be tolerated.
Most instructors wouldn't do what you described ... not on any of the things I commented on above. There is just so much wrong with this description that it makes me wonder how this fellow ever managed to pass his IE.
******* What I wish had happened*****
I believe that this goes back to the dive plan, and in the future I'll try to be more vocal. It's a delicate balance between being assertive and argumentative.
- Instructor should have stated the dive objectives and required buddy and I to plan the dive.
Absolutely! What you just described is a classic "trust me" dive ... only you did it with someone you couldn't trust.
- Instructor should have allowed us to run the dive and only taken control of the skills portion. Maybe one student lead descent and one student lead ascent. This would demonstrate that we have mastery of the material as opposed to being able to just dive the tour.
This is how a Deep Diver class is supposed to be run ... if you want the students to get anything out of it. By now, you're past the "a few more supervised dives" stage of dive instruction. You need to be taking an active role in planning and leading the dives.
- Instructor should have covered a separation plan if he didn't want us to surface when separated.
Dear God yes ... what kind of instructor would neglect that on a deep dive? It's one of the most fundamental things you should have talked about.
- Instructor should have done meaningful knowledge reviews of course material (as opposed to reading the question and the answers)
It would be interesting to know how many dives this instructor has outside of a classroom ... my bet would be not many. You're describing the classic "book smart, but don't know a damn thing about diving" type of instructor.
- The descent would have been slower because it is a challenging dive and 2 of the 3 divers are relatively new. We would have included check points where we stop, make sure everyone is fine, and then decide to continue deeper.
You should be descending TOGETHER ... keeping an eye on each other as you descend. If someone has a problem, you ALL stop and deal with it.
This is something you should have learned in OW class. Good grief, think about what you would have done if, rather than an equalization problem, you'd have suddenly been unable to breathe off your tank!
You simply don't GO deep without first establishing some protocols for doing it safely.
I don't see that this instructor is teaching you ANYTHING!
- Safety should always be the first priority, period.
You'd be hard put to find an agency that doesn't agree with that notion.
- Instructor should have expressed concern when we separated, listended to what happened, and debriefed the dive with suggestions on alternate strategies.
He's ill equipped to be teaching. My guess would be he went through the same class progression you're embarking on ... and probably became an instructor as quickly as he was eligible. The reaction you got from him screams loudly that he's not adequately equipped to handle students.
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
