I just finished my AOW cert - something I've been looking forward to for a while. I have been diving for about two years and before the cert class had completed 25 dives - 5 in CA, 10 in the Maldives, and 10 in the Caribbean. I've been lucky to have had the opportunity to dive such great places.
My AOW cert was extremely underwhelming. Navigation dive was cursory, the "deep" dive went down to 62 feet, there was a "boat" dive that was nothing more than any other boat experience, and the fish identification was a joke. All of the other divers in my various dives were right out of OW cert and had no experience diving outside of a class setting. During the navigation dive, one of the divers even kept popping up to the surface due to his inability to control buoyancy...and he was still passed to the next level!!! Most appallingly, not once did a dive instructor instruct us to do a safety stop at the end of dives. Although most dives weren't deep, shouldn't a safety stop be SOP?
At $400 for this class I expected to learn more about being an effective diver and coming away with new skills. Sadly, I think this cert was pointless and I would have done better spending that money on recreation dives. I'm thinking about writing a bad review of the dive shop and even asking for a partial refund. Am I overreacting? Would appreciate your thoughts!
We've been down this road on ScubaBoard before ... with a predictable progression of responses. So I might as well add mine ...
What you got is the natural consequence of a class that's been designed to offer to students straight out of OW ... and marketed as "Five more dives with an instructor". The objective of the class isn't to learn new skills, it's to provide a few new experiences and give the students a bit more supervised underwater time. In effect, it's not an "advanced" class at all ... it's advancing the students beyond the point of barely being able to breathe underwater while not killing themselves.
There are instructors out there who take a different approach, and who offer a different kind of class. I'm one of them. When I became an instructor in 2004 I took one look at what my agency (NAUI) offered for their "standard" AOW and decided I couldn't, with a clear conscience, charge my students money for that. So I augmented the AOW material with a handbook that I co-wrote with another local NAUI instructor (who now teaches for UTD). Our local conditions are fairly demanding, and students are expected to be able to conduct their own dives unsupervised right now of OW class ... we don't do guided dives here ... and anything other than a few entry-level sites can be more challenging than an OW grad can be reasonably expected to handle safely. So we identified core skills that we felt even a relatively inexperienced diver should be able to handle ...
- How to research a dive site, evaluate conditions, and plan a suitable dive profile
- How to determine you have adequate gas for the dive you plan to do
- How to be a good dive buddy, and what to expect from your dive buddy
- How to properly weight yourself and distribute weights for proper trim
- How to control your buoyancy, even while task-loaded
- How to do complex navigation underwater (it involves a bit more than just reading a compass)
- How to plan and execute night dives
- How to plan and execute deep dives
- How to plan and execute search & recovery dives
Notice a theme there? It's one thing to tell somebody to "always dive with a buddy" or "end the dive with 500 psi" ... it's another thing to give them adequate knowledge to do it ... and still another to put it into practice.
My class involves a minimum of six dives ... none elective, and each building on skills introduced in previous dives. The class isn't over until all objectives have been met to my criteria ... which is that I'd trust you to dive in that circumstance with someone I loved (that's my agency's standard, by the way). If you struggle, we do that dive again. My last class took eight dives to complete, and that's not unusual.
In this AOW class you learn how to deploy an SMB. You learn how to navigate using compass, visual clues, and by creating a "mental map" of where you are relative to your starting position as you dive. You learn how to calculate your expected gas usage BEFORE getting in the water. You learn how to bring up objects using a lift bag, and how to conduct searches using a reel. You learn fundamental skills for diving with another person ... positioning, communication, and most of all a mentality toward approaching the dive as a team, rather than a couple of individuals. You learn proper buoyancy control ... NOTHING in this class is done while kneeling ... in fact, one whole dive is done mid-water, where the bottom is usually not even visible.
This isn't a "unique" class ... I know a few instructors who teach something similar. This isn't an agency issue ... I learned a lot of what I built into my class from an experienced PADI instructor I used to DM for.
It really boils down to the instructor ... are they providing you with real value for the type of diving you'll be doing, or are they simply following a checklist of minimum standards their agency says they "have" to do? Are they looking to train divers or just make money?
Different people have different expectations about what they want out of the class ... and if you get into a class that doesn't match your expectations, then you will be disappointed. It's up to you to do your diligence.
For those reading this who are thinking about an AOW class, ask your instructor what the purpose of the class is. And ask them if they encourage this class directly out of OW. If they tell you that it's to provide new experiences, to provide five more dives with an instructor, or that they encourage people to sign up for the class directly out of OW, then expect it to be the sort of class the OP described. If, on the other hand, they encourage you to get out and dive on your own for a while first, or can elaborate what new skills you'll get out of the class, then you will probably be getting something closer to what I described above.
Never just sign up for a class ... AOW or otherwise ... without doing your diligence, because the same class can offer wildly different results depending on the objectives, enthusiasm, and experience of the person teaching it. Do your diligence. Ask questions ... and shy away from any instructor who can't be bothered to answer your questions. Go into it with your eyes open ... otherwise the chances of the class meeting your expectations are a pure crapshoot ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
