Man, I thought the rules for this sub-forum said something like "This forum is intended to be a "flame free zone" where divers of any skill level may share their incident without fear of being accosted. Please show respect and courtesy at all times.". Well, apparently I've misunderstood something.
Thats's a question, how someone coming, let's say, to a PADI ***** Dive Club could possibly know, that the course there is shoddy and fast-track? One needs knowledge to make such a judgement. Otherwise he/she would trust the brand (reputable agency, licensed club / instructor / divemaster, etc.)
Some senior divers sound like saying, that all newbies should somehow naturally know what they must know before boarding a dive boat, even if they were not taught; and that they also should be able to tell a good course from a bad one. Isn't this an equally unfounded, unrealistic expectation as to expect a DM to be your nurse? Normally, people even don't know what they don't know...
Since this already has been said, I don't need to repeat it. But I'll QFT it anyway.
When I certified last summer, I had two agencies to choose from. After some research on curriculum content and time spent for a cert, I chose one of those. It was not a large international commercial agency. Unfortunately, the LDS offering certifications from my agency of choice didn't get enough students to run the course without loss, so it was canceled and I ended up at the other LDS, which is affiliated with, eh, a large international commercial agency. The OW course took a little more than a week. We had four evenings of theory "teaching", basically watching the videos and answering the quizzes. Having attended university, I'm comfortable with being left to my own reading and repetition discipline to learn a subject, however I'm far from convinced that the average person can learn stuff well enough that way. I can't say that the OW dives were inadequate, but the amount of time spent in the water could definitely have been longer.
Now, due to national regulations, we didn't have 4 OW dives. We had 6, the last two done as independent dives with no instructor telling us what to do. We planned the dives and dived the plan after discussing the plan with the instructor. To me, those two dives made a huge difference. It was only after those I really understood, on a gut level, that I and I alone am responsible for my own safety. And because of that experience, I can sympathize with the OP. Unless s/he has been told explicitly and repeatedly just that, and even been forced to experience that on a practical level, how the heck is s/he supposed to know that? You don't know what you haven't learned. And far from everyone is able to just absorb that kind of knowledge by some mystical osmosis thing without being
taught it.
My first post-cert dive was totally independent. I was apprehensive as h*ll, but I had a cert claiming I was able to dive independently, and by Jove, that was what I was going to be, also since the culture among divers around here seems to be very similar to the culture in the PNW US. But again, if the general culture where you live and/or get certified isn't like that, how can a n00b be expected to realize what a bunch of posters have been saying here, in ways that I would have felt quite uncomfortable if I were the OP.
In retrospect, if I had known what I know now, I would rather have waited until whenever the "other" LDS was running a month-long * course than jumping on the week-and-a-half OW course I ended up taking. Even if it could have given me some minor problems having my C-card recognized in some parts of the world. But things being as they are, I've got my plastic, I have learned that I'm supposed to be wholly responsible for my own safety and I'm working continually on my skills to be able to do that. But neither the agency nor the LDS can claim a gram of credit for that mindset.
And I still think that the piling on the OP in this thread is at least bending the rules for this sub-forum.
