I have not read through the response on Scuba Board. This is what I responded to the student on his site.
Brucie,
I have a number of points that come to mind. First I have known Martin for many years, I have a huge amount of respect for both his diving and his teaching abilities. I am also an instructor with much less experience than Martin has. The first year that I met him, in NFL, we talked about our diving for a few days. We both have a passion for exploration and have applied rebreathers to some of our diving so we found some common ground. Towards the end of the week Martin was very undecided about one of his students mind set and if he should pass him or not. I was suprised when he asked if I would join the dive team to give an outside evaluation. As I said Martin has much more experience than I have as well as higher instructor ratings. In the end I agreed and we completed a dive in Telford. I will not bore you with all of the details and instead come to the point. After completing the dive, being involved in the dive critique and the dive debriefing I was able to form my own opinions. Later that evening Martin and I talked about the dive. It was my opinion that his student did not have the proper mind set and should come back for more training. Martin stayed longer than he had planned and worked with this diver to give him the time needed to get things dialed in and eventually passed the course with a lot of extra time put in from Martin beyond his planned stay for this trip.
Now that you have an idea of where my mind set is I would like to comment on some of the things that stand out from your report. Through out the report I did not know who your instructor was and was taking it at face value. First are the comments about PADI courses. I am a PADI MSDT instructor so there is no bashing from my view point. PADI is a very succesfull training agency and has some good points for other agencies to learn from. That being said some of their corporate structure does not favor technical diving. They have DSAT tech programs and they have only made these issues come into a sharper focus. In my opinion Full Cave is a more difficult course to teach than Advanced Trimix. PADI in the past issued cave cards and does not presently go beyond the cavern cert. Again in my opinion this is a good move on their part.
The second thing that came to mind was your comment on being berrated in your class for your mistakes. My training was very intense and I was berrated through out my class. The reason is because of my background and past training. I was first trained through the military so I am accustomed to this style of teaching. I also had been diving in the caves for many years without the certifications, I had received training but had not gotten the cards. My instructor had spent some time with me and understood my background, from this he structured the class to give me the most stress that he could and to open my eyes to the fact that I had a lot to learn. At this level of instruction the skills should already have been learned requiring the instructor to only fine tune technique. The real test is of your mind set and how you handle diversity. Most of your attention to specific skill and techniques leads me to believe that you completly missed this point. That in itself to me, as a technical instructor, could give me cause to fail someone. I know Martins teaching style and it is my opinion that he is very good at balancing stress with instruction. The bottom line in my opinion is that you may have had too much hand holding in your past technical classes. I have also had this experience with some of my students and I do understand your shock. Take the time in an attempt to look at the entire process from a different perspective. You may find that the things you let affect you emotionally were put there for a good reason. One of the biggest killers in this type of diving is letting your emotions take control.
The third point you made was diving for fun and enjoyment. I agree that most are doing diving for recreation. I also agree that we all do it for enjoyment. My point though is that when you get to a certain level of diving part of that enjoyment comes from open and even sometimes controversial discussion about your dive planning, execution and thought process. The bottom line is that this is serious stuff and you can die from it. You can not take any part of it for granted or assume that just because you have the training it will come out OK. This is not the case, there are many times that you can do everything right and something or someone else changes the dynamic which may cause you to lose your life. If you do not or can not accept this than you should not do this type of diving. Training is meant to show you how to deal with this reality and from what you have said I am seeing that you have not yet come to this understanding.
The fourth point that stood out to me was your comments about how Martin cut down other instructors. I have been around Martin and I must say that he will not hold back his opinions. Having said this I also know that when he does comment about another intructor he is carefull to use it in a constructive fashion. Some of the instructors you mentioned I have heard first hand, from Martin, his thoughts and they are not the picture you painted. From your perspective you may have taken it that way but again I suggest you reflect and look at the situations from an open mind set.
The Fifth point deals with consistency. I know the training protocols and your stated training does not match with the course. You stated that you have taken cavern (PADI) and intro to cave. All of the agencies you mentioned will allow cross training; CDS, NACD & IANTD. PADI is not commonly accepted when moving on to the Intro to Cave level but after that it is not an issue. My point is that you accepted a zero to hero course (cavern through full cave in one shot) when you already had past training. This action in itself draws a flag in my mind about your past training. I wrote the Fundamentals to Technical Diving course that is approved and accepted through TDI. I have also had students come through this course and tell me that the course gave them an understanding of their diving skill weak points that all of their other courses did not provide. Some of these divers have been Advanced Trimix & rebreather certified. My point is that you may have not had the opportunity to have instruction form someone that knows how to exploit weak points you need to work on in your diving. This is not a slight on you but an opportunity to open a new level of understanding.
To conclude I must say that I was not there for you training and do not know what actually happened. I have not been an IANTD intructor form many years so I have not talked to Tom Mount or looked at the dive logs, I also have not talked with Martin about this. My response is solely from what you posted and some of your response to others that have posted a response. I have given you an honest review of what I see. In saying that if you want some suggestions for cave instructors I will work with you for a recommendation. I do not teach this course but will make recomendations after getting a better understanding of you and what you need.
Best Regards,
Bobby
