OW classes - Things I wish I learned ?

[goodformeto]

Gas management. Mostly the proper attitude of gas management. We were taught to leave 500-800 psi. in the tank, which basically resulted in people heading in the general direction of the boat early and at the end of the dives you had 6-8 people swimming around in the immidiate proximity of the boat trying to get that last bit of sightseeing in. If we'd just gone to the top we probably could have gotten another full dive in instead of sitting under the boat for 10 minutes so we didn't feel cheated.

 

[ozziworld]

I supposeall the comments can be taken on board to possibly make changes or otherwise improve dive training. I think the points made have all been valid and worthy of consideration. What we have not heard from are how we believe the agencies can 'design' their courses to address all the different considerations such as length of the course, class time, pool time and ocean time. I would imagine it also involves determining what goes into advanced class, rescue or other specialty courses.

What would be the most important of course is the balance of all these considerations. At this time, it seems to me the courses are designed to be 'friendlier' so that more divers get in the water. More divers bigger industry. However if divers are not enjoying themselves because of safety and similar concerns they will not continue diving as well. Then we are looking at quality vs quantity of new divers buying gear and otherwise becoming part of the dive industry and its economics.

I hope there would be dive agency initiatives to study the dynamics of all these concerns and courses can be re-designed to fit a newer 'model' of OW Diver certification.

 

[spectrum]

I agree absolutely. After completing OW one should be able to do a novice dive w/o any serious untoward consequences.

Problem is that as newly certified divers, they won't have the experienced based judgement to make good decisions about what is or isn't a "novice" dive. Nor will either be equiped to assist the other in case of a serious unforeseen problem.

The old saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing comes to mind. Whether it's diving, driving, or education in any field there will always be that combustable mix of youthful enthusiam and over-confidence. There's a reason that second year high school and college students are called sophmores.

I love nothing more than watching fledgling divers spread their wings and fly, I'm just suggesting that they do it with a safety net. dF

It's scenario dependent for sure. Having spent my life on the coast and being not that adventuresome probably kept me out of some wrong situations. Our OW class did discuss times, places, situations to avoid and that helped. Early dives were at a pond and ocean coves, all of which we knew well from skin-diving the locations. I had also been a ScubaBoard junkie for a year by then and had soaked up some helpful wisdom.

It was when we decided to go deeper, into the night and make the occasional solo that we needed to look in the mirror to make sure we were not getting ahead of things.

Looking back over the posts in this thread I can see the expected disparity in where divers were when they left the nest for the first time.

Pete

 

[katdiver]

I like the idea of the online knowledge development that's done by some agencies now. That should mean that divers who learn on vacation can concentrate fully on the practicle skills as the "classroom" stuff is out of the way.

 

[TMHeimer]

I too wish more time was spent on proper weighting. We used the shop's gear, of course, and standard weight belts, etc. Once I got my own stuff, buoyancy was never a problem. I can see, though, that properly weighting all in the class would take a fair bit of time away from the skills--Perhaps an additional pool session.

 

[DiverDurf]

I just got OW certified in Dec. I feel that PADI is crap when it comes to proper weighting and bouyancy control. Seriously, I feel jipped by it and pissed off at the same time. My LDS did the ol' "10 lbs of your body weight is what you need in lead weight." I may be 195 lbs, but 19 lbs of lead is NOT what I needed to sink. I am now down to 12 lbs of weight and doing great, and I'm even considering moving down to 10 or 11 on my next dive. I also feel that I obtained a faster than normal understanding of bouyancy because I basically grew up in the water in some sport or another, but I haven't even remotely mastered control of it yet. This, to me, is vitally important when it comes to diving reef sanctuaries or springs with heavy silt beds. I hate that PADI wants me to pay more money and take a peak boyuancy class to be "certified" in another arena. I'm growing to dislike PADI very, very much already. I'd much rather have an experienced diver show me the rops rather than hand over my wallet every time I want to learn something.

 

[rstofer]

One way to solve your issues of weighting and buoyancy training is to offer an extended Open Water course. People could opt for the fast program or the longer, more comprehensive program. Of course, cost would differ substantially because time is money and few students would opt for the comprehensive program.

Oh, wait! They already do this! They just call it a specialty. You need to think of these specialties and advanced classes as nothing more that Open Water Extended.

You can certainly learn from a more experienced diver. But you can only learn what they know and it's up to you to determine if what they show you is correct. So, you have to decide that what you don't know is being taught properly while not knowing what it is that you don't know. Hm... Maybe this should be left to a professional with an agency to determine what needs to be taught and how.

Richard

 

[Peter Guy]

I don't often defend any one agency but I do take offense at the statement that "PADI is crap" with regards to training -- I don't believe it is at all. HOWEVER, there are way too many instructors who, in my always and ever so humble opinion, don't do the job of teaching they should -- and therein lies the problem. Perhaps the Agency could, and should, do a better job of encouraging better instruction -- but perhaps the instructors could just do a better job!

 

[M.HARDY]

I had a bit of trouble with my open OW also..it mainly taught me to get out and dive as much as i could before my AOW...I struggled abit with that also but it wasn't as bad as my OW..I'm enrolled in the Master Scuba Diver program..i have decided not to take any of the Diving Specialties until I've loggedat least 20 more dives after my AOW...I feel alot more comfortable and secure with my abilities and limits now

 

[AZjohn]

I feel pretty lucky with my OW class. My buddy and I did it with just the two of us, we had to pay a little extra but it was well worth it. The instructor gave us a lot of hands on training and made sure we could do the skills before moving on. When it was all said and done he told us we were now able to start learning to dive. I took it very seriously, my buddy not so much and now I find myself having to find new buddies to dive with since I am looking to do more challenging dives and his skills are just not there. He is fine with that and has gone as far as he wants to with diving. We still do the warm water vacations together with a great group of divers so it's all good but thankfully I have found some avid divers to take it to the next level.

It all starts with a good foundation and you get out of it what you put into it.

Regards

Boy, this sounds exactly like my situation.

My friend and I took our OW class together with the same instructor (awesome guy) and everything. And now it seems we are miles apart on what we learned from our class. My buddy just doesn't have the same drive as I do to learn and practice more and more. Thus I have started to look for new diving buddy's which is sad to me because I thought we would do all our dives together.

So I feel I got exactly what I needed from our OW class but I bet he would say different because every time we practice emergency skills he gets lost on what to do. This is not a good situation for me to be in diving with him. But I try to work with him and support him but he just doesn't seem to want to learn and practise more.

I agree that my OW cert is only a learning permit, and it's up to me to continue building experiance and skills upon that.

John