PADI or SSI to go PRO

[muddiver]

Well, you don't know where you want to work. PADI is the most widespread organisation. So if you do PADI, then odds are wherever you wind up will have a PADI shop. If not it's fairly easy to crossover from PADI to most of the other big training agencies if need be. Just playing the percentages

Actually that is incorrect because as tstormdiver stated an SSI Dive Con is a combonation of the equivilant PADI Divemaster and Assistant Instructor. It would be better to go SSI up to Dive Con and then cross over to PADI if you really wanted to become a PADI professional. I have been looking at this because the shop I now spend most of my time at is SSI/ANDI and I am a PADI Divemaster. Crossing over for me would not really be worth the effort without the additional training to be a Dive Con.

 

[Mattleycrue76]

The QUALITY of the teacher, his patience and his level of mastering diving is what important. And this, NONE of the agencies can give you or take from you

If this is truly what you believe then you should have a few years and several hundred dives ahead of you before you need to be making any major decisions in this regard

 

[knfevg]

Mattleycrue, well, first of all, I'm around 150 dives. Second - taking the training now doesn't mean I will start teaching right away. Simply now I have the time to do the training.
Regarding the CrossOver option - as far as I know it costs money, so isn't it better to do all of the training in the same organization till the end (instructor) and only than do the crossover?
So for PADI it would be:
DM->Assistant->OWD instructor

For SSI:
DiveCon->OWD Instructor (?)

 

[Mattleycrue76]

Hi there,
I'm and AOWD from PADI and Nitrox certified from IANTD. Have several dozen logged dives.

Mattleycrue, well, first of all, I'm around 150 dives.

Sorry, don't know why I assumed you only had several dozen dives under your belt.

 

[H2O 70]

First of all, last time I checked, Israel was still a part of Europe

I recently finished my PADI DM. A friend of mine is doing the SSI Dive Con.

Content between the two courses is almost exactly the same. The materials for SSI appear to be more organized. He showed me his one massive binder and I showed him my PADI Instructor Manual, Diver Master Manual, Encyclopedia of Recreational Diving, Knowledge Review and the DVD's. PADI has their content all over the place. Often times it felt you you had to go to four spots to answer a single question. I grabbed my buddies SSI book and 'physics' was in one section.

It seems that most agencies allow PADI to simply cross over. To cross over to SDI DM, I'd pay $100 and fill out some paperwork. It doesn't work the other way. If I was an SDI DM, I'd have to take some tests and pay a lot of money.

Just curious. I'm sure that most people here in the US would not consider Israel to be in Europe or European. Most here in the US would consider Israel to be in the Middle East (why I don't know, but that is how I've/we've heard it on the news as long as I can remember and that begins with the Iran & Iraq Was and the 7-Day War). Israel is on the Asian continent, not the European continent.

 

[knfevg]

6-days war it is

Israel is on the European side of the Eurasian tectonic plate, so geologically wise it's Europe.
Politically, economically and culturally it's also European. Military wise....well... it' ME (but, hey.... on geography lesson they didn't have such a continent ME)

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Military wise it's some bad ass guys and gals that smart people do not mess with! My first wife is Jewish and so that makes my son and daughter eligible for Israeli citizenship should they choose to pursue it. Thank you for being a bastion of sanity in an insane region. I mean that with all my heart. I would love to visit someday and dive there. And every Israeli woman I have met has been absolutely beautiful. And most likely able to kill me easily and that is just so hot! I also worked as a Kosher butcher for 4 years. Shalom, my friend and stay active here.

 

[H2O 70]

6-days war it is

Israel is on the European side of the Eurasian tectonic plate, so geologically wise it's Europe.
Politically, economically and culturally it's also European. Military wise....well... it' ME (but, hey.... on geography lesson they didn't have such a continent ME)

Sorry, 6-Day War.

It is one that is studied over and over again! Blows my mind every time I read about it.

 

[Web Monkey]

My intention is to get up to a level on which I can teach OWD and AOWD in either of the systems (SSI or PADI). As I understood from the last massage by Tstormdiver, in PADI I can work as a freelancer while in SSI I must work with a club?
In this case, I dont see any reason going with SSI....

If you want to teach, I'd suggest going with SSI in the location where you want to live and getting a commitment from the shop owner ahead of time.

SSI professionals are required to work with a shop. While this makes it harder to find work if you move around, it makes it easier to find work if you stay in one place and the shop that trained you likes you.

While a PADI professional can work anywhere, and doesn't need a shop affiliation, the down-side is that you'll be competing for a job with everybody else in the world, who can also work anywhere, and you'll generally need to find your own customers.

The other side of the coin is that no matter what you do or where you go, you'll be making almost nothing, since there's a tremendous oversupply of people who wanted to "live the dream" and many have other income and are willing and able to work for little or nothing.

Terry

 

[knfevg]

Let me explain you why I want to have this "instruction license". Most probably I will be going to either USA (New England area) or EU (Geneva or a place near Paris) to study for my MBA. In all of these places (besides France) there is some diving clubs. I want to have some proffesion that I can use to make a small earning while at the school I thought that diving could be just that.