- Messages
- 94,351
- Reaction score
- 93,391
- Location
- On the Fun Side of Trump's Wall
- # of dives
- 2500 - 4999
Hello! I have yet to go scuba diving, but would appreciate your opinions on internships that turn beginners into divemasters or instructors. I was looking into this one, specifically, and would love to hear if anyone has been affiliated with them in the past.
Koh Tao scuba internships - Gap year Thailand dive instructor internship
They are in Koh Tao, Thailand and the cost is a little under $10k, for 7 months, including accommodation and everything.
Really, any advice would be welcome. The prospect of being able to turn scuba diving into a career sounds incredible to a recent graduate, refusing to enter to corporate world of desk jobs.
It's a nice dream ... and one shared by a lot of people. In some ways it reminds me of when I moved to Seattle, 20 years ago. Driving out here from New England with no job, no real plans, and the attitude that if nothing else I could always open a coffee shop. When I arrived, I realized that about 100,000 other people had the same idea ... and most of them weren't going to be very successful. In other words, you could end up spending a lot of money only to find out that it's not at all what you'd hoped for and that you really don't like it.
As others have said, learn to dive first. You live in a place where the diving is very good and very accessible. Take advantage of it. Scuba diving involves a great deal more than what you'll learn in a class ... any class. And the real learning happens in the water. Spend some time learning before you decide whether teaching is for you.
Then keep in mind that once you start to do something for pay, it ceases being recreation and becomes a job. Successful instructors don't succeed because the love diving ... they succeed because they love teaching. The typical scuba instructor lasts about two years ... then either burns out, loses interest, or realizes that with few exceptions it's a subsistence type of job. If your passion sustains you, you'll have to learn other trades to make ends meet.
If you really want to be an instructor, then do it right. Learn to dive, take your time to go through the progression ... allowing experience to teach you things you won't get out of a classroom. Put some context into what you're doing ... it's what makes the difference between a real instructor and someone who can only regurgitate what was in the student handbook ... and there are lots of bad instructors out there who can only do that. The world doesn't need more of those. If it turns out to be something you really want to do, develop the skills to do it well and take some pride in what you're doing.
There's a world of difference between diving and teaching diving. The zero-to-hero courses aren't designed to help you learn what those differences are. And more often than not, they turn out to be a worse investment than a longer, step-by-step approach.
... Bob (Grateful Diver)