Is AOW worth the time? This question is for people who have gone through the class, if you knew then what you know now about the class, would you bother?
I would like to go through it, but I only want to if I am going to learn something that will make me a better/safer diver. If its worth it, are the other classes?
Basically I want to take classes until I go through the rescue course mainly because most of the classes that I would take are interesting but sound like they would teach me more about diving. If its just marketing to get my $$ and I will learn just as much in the long run by diving a lot, I would appreciate to find that out before I invest/waste the money.
As is usually the case with these kinds of questions, the answer is "It depends". It depends on how independent you are, how much of a self-motivated learner you are, the quality of your instructor, whether you've got mentors available, and sometimes, the agency you take it with (I'm not opening that can of worms).
For me, the answer was no. I didn't learn anything in AOW (Deep, Night/Limited Vis, Nav., Dry suit) that I couldn't/hadn't already learned on my own. But I'm a water baby, had been skin diving since the age of 10, am very self-motivated when learning something that interests me, and have spent a lot of time in various outdoor recreations on my own. My instructor was also not the most thorough. In effect, I had something over 35 years of preparation before I ever got my OW certification, so most of what was covered I was already familiar with, or could easily figure out by reading (in my case, well beyond the manual).
Someone who's insecure in the water, not independent, not a self-learner, and/or who has a very thorough instructor, may get a very great deal out of AOW. So you have to honestly evaluate yourself as to where you fit on the spectrum, and try to evaluate the instructor as well.
To me, the main usefulness of the AOW card is to have it to show for boats that insist on it to do particular dives. It's often a poor way of evaluating someone's skills, as the typical AOW curriculum should really be called OW part II, and having the card is no guarantee that the person is a competent diver. But it's sometimes all the boat captains have to go on, and is maybe better than nothing.
The other thing is that some agencies insist on AOW before you can take Rescue. This is the case with SSI and I believe it's the case with PADI. NAUI doesn't require AOW as a prerequisite. Other agencies vary.
HTH,
Guy
