Diving Instructor for one year?

[AaronRiot]

I really appreciated the fact that my instructor had a ton of experience. He was able to answer a loads of questions that weren't directly related to the course work. He shared stories from years and years of diving as a pass time. He had technical diving experience, which was cool because he was able to talk about (with first-hand experience) how to pursue some further options. He had an eye for detail from hours upon hours of experience, and was able to offer usable insight rather than regurgitated rhetoric.

I would be pissed if I signed up for a class and got a zero to hero. If you're experienced and this happens to be your first class, cool, but you have to master a skill set before you teach it. 200 hours dive time does not make you a master of your skill set, nor does 200hrs make you a master of any skill set apart from perhaps twiddling your thumbs.


I would love to teach diving, and plan to eventually. When I do I will have more than just a card to bring to the table.

Take your 3000 and go backpacking and have fun diving all over the place and come back to the idea in a few years, for the sake of your prospective students.

 

[hroark2112]

If I were in your shoes, I would take the year and dive for fun. Pure enjoyment and experience. In that year, you'll learn a ton. You will screw up. You will learn from your mistakes. You will see other people screw up and maybe you'll be competent enough to help them. You will have awesome dives and terrible dives. While you're at it, take nitrox. Get your AOW. Hone your navigation skills and perfect your buoyancy skills. Take Rescue Diver. Have fun.

Once you're done with all that, find a local shop and build a relationship. Volunteer to help out with classes. Lug tanks, help gear up students, hose down wetsuits, act as a victim for rescue class. Then consider if you want to continue to dive as a profession or if you just want to dive for fun.

But have fun first!!

 

[Doppler]

... The plan was that the money I get as instructor pays for my year and my training.

It simply will not work out that way. Anyplace that will take you, wants your money. You seem to be dead set on doing what you asked us to assess... we told you to forget about it... You are not listening.

GO DIVE. FORGET ABOUT BECOMING AN INSTRUCTOR UNTIL YOU CAN DIVE.

 

[Yoyodyne-88]

"The plan was that the money I get as instructor pays for my year and my training."

Plese, stop! It hurts when I laugh that hard...

 

[Phil_C]

Marcel, most of what I would normally have said has already been said so I will not repeat it, however I would ask one question - if you did your open water, made fifteen dives, but then haven't dived for a year why do you think the 'bug' has hit and you really like diving that much that you want to put your life on hold to pursue it?

If you had really caught the diving bug I would have expected you to move heaven and earth to have got wet since your certification and to keep diving.

I suspect that you may not actually be as committed to diving as you think you are ! - whatever choice you make best wishes - Phil.

 

[RJP]

University in Germany is free

Never really understood why so many people confuse "paid for by someone else" with "free."



---------- Post added May 21st, 2015 at 10:09 PM ----------

It simply will not work out that way. Anyplace that will take you, wants your money. You seem to be dead set on doing what you asked us to assess... we told you to forget about it... You are not listening.

I've found that the best way to get people to follow your advice is to find out what they WANT to do... and advise them to do THAT.

 

[Nasser]

Unfortunately even if you do have a ton of diving experience and instructor qualifications, you will find it difficult to work in more exotic locations without multi-language skills. The market is saturated with dive masters and instructors who are hired more for their fluency in multiple languages and people skills... not only for their diving qualifications and experience.

If you simply must take a year off from your sturdies then consider the following.

1. Dive your ass off for fun and gain some experience... maybe take a course in AOW and Rescue. Consider an internship at a dive center helping out in whatever is needed. You will gain a better insight into the industry and how things work.

2. During this year, take courses in another language... or two. The more fluency you have in languages, the more the likelihood you will find work in the diving industry.

3. Go back to University after your year off and get your degree. Continue to study languages and dive in your spare time.

4. Once you graduate, re-asses you situation and then if you still want to become an instructor, do it with some diving experience, language skills, and a University degree under your belt.

Good luck

 

[scoobydrew]

It's probably worth noting that the OPs question was not "With only 15 dives... can I become a scuba instructor someday?"

The answer to the that question is "Sure, go for it!"


The OPs question is "With only 15 dives... should I put my university studies on hold to become a scuba instructor?"

The answer to that question is "No, don't be an idiot!"

Yeah, I had misunderstood the point of the question.

I guess putting uni on hold is a bad thing then? I didn't go to university so not aware of the negative effects of pausing for a year.

To the OP - You mentioned that you have enough cash to do the IDC and then would be reliant on scuba earnings to get by, that plan is not water tight. I have been full time for a long time and still struggle. As a rookie instructor you need to plan on having enough cash to get through a long period of no work or working for very little (if anything at all), staying afloat and recouping costs in year one is very ambitions.

There was a comment about languages. It is advantageous to be able to speak and ideally teach in different languages. The golden ones used to be German, French and Italian. Now the sought after ones are Korean, Chinese (Mandarin), Polish & Russian, depending on where you want to work. I speak Spanish as well as English but in 8 years of full time teaching I have only ever taught one course in Spanish. Throughout five jobs in five countries, English has always got me work easy enough. So much depends on what part of the world yo go to.

Anyhow, as I mentioned, I did not go to university and do not feel I missed out, maybe that will change in time. While others were in university I was touring with a rock n roll band having lots of fun, I ended up as a scuba instructor which is also quite good fun. That said, I would not advise you to jeopardize your education, you'd be far better off as others have said, carry on at school and get some nice dive vacations in.

 

[tye1138]

To me, it's sad just reading this kind of thread.

I feel like becoming an instructor is no different then going to a trade school to become a car mechanic. Pay the money, take the course, now your certified to work. The only difference is that with SCUBA diving, there are people's lives on the line.

There was a recent study that said, it takes 10,000 hours of doing something, to master it. Yet, PADI only requires 60 logged dives to enter their IDC program. Those are either some REALLY long dives, or something doesn't add up. Sure, other agencies like NAUI have more stringent requirements, but nobody comes close to 10,000 hours.

When I did my IDC course, I had over 200 logged dives, had been up and down the east coast wreck penetration diving, solo diving with a pony bottle, deep dives with nitrox and doubles, ice diving in the middle of winter and of course many fun dives. I worked in the industry as a dive master helping my friend teach courses and run his business. I spent hundreds of hours in the pool during the week and dove every weekend. Working in the SCUBA industry is what I wanted to do. Yet, I only survived a year teaching before I moved away from home and haven't been able to find a job in the industry since. Eventually an inner ear problem prohibited me from equalizing and I was out of the water for years. I can't imagine if all my eggs were in the diving basket, I would have been completely screwed.

All of that to say, people have grandiose ideas of teaching diving in far-off lands, but with PADI turning out hundreds of new instructors every month, there are too many instructors and nowhere near enough paying work. I don't mean to sound harsh, but a good portion of those IDC candidates aren't very good divers to begin with. They're taught that anyone can be an instructor if they just follow PADI's documentation… yea right.

 

[Oldbear]

I have a few opinionated points:

(1) Divemaster course teaches you how guide/lead a dive tour and assist an instructor. Instructor Development Coures teaches you how to instruct recreational dive courses with a specific methodology. Neither course will teach you how to dive...you are expected to know how to dive when you show up for the courses. Do not take these courses with the hopes of becoming a better diver...to late for that, you should take advance specialties courses, rec and tech, to enhance you dive skill sets BEFORE taking the DM and IDC courses.

(2) Training agencies, for the most part, are businesses first and need to make a profit. They market diving lifestyle as such a great life to live...and it can be. But the truth of the matter is a small percentage of instructors make their living teaching new divers. So the money to be made is teaching Professional courses. I think the entry and graduation dive count to be a professional is way too low. WAY TO LOW. But it is a profitable business so get them early or some other agency will. I worked with a kid who took his open water certification in Thailand. He came back full of enthusiasm and excited to go back to his newly founded instructor friend who told the kid he was so good and a natural diver that he would personally train him to the Divemaster level...all with just four dives. I dived with him and he honestly thought diving in a vertical trim along a flat horizontal reef was cool. Fate would intervene as it turned out and the kid found true love in Thailand to whom he could give all of his money to...at least until he told her that he quit his job in the Middle East and was moving to Thailand to spend the rest of his life with her. She immediately dumped his butt and told him don't bother to show up with no job.

To the OP I know in Europe it is common to take a slack year from college. I suggest you go to the cheap countries and dive, dive, dive. Take specialties like Deep Diver, Wreck Diver, sidemount, GUE Fundier, EAN, Advance Nitrox and Decompretion, Advance Wreck, etc. Learn bar tending there are twice as many bars as dive shops...pay you way that way.

Just my thoughts...