Carribeandiver:
I believe the reason for that is diving through the OW training is no fun. I finished because I started but I honestly considered not diving again after I gained OW certification.
I recall my first dive after being certified. It was great, no one to watch, no tricks to perform, just a relaxed dive with a friend. Diving suddenly gained a whole new perspective for me and I realized it was what I imagined it could be. And the funny part is, I practice those tricks when diving and it is no big deal.
When my LDS does their checkout dives, they do Friday at Vortex Spring, and they cover all the skills to be sure everyone has them down. (If you can't do it in the spring, your weekend is over and you'll have to try again later.) On Saturday, they make two dives in the Gulf out of Panama City Beach, and they do a quick recheck of the actual dive-related skills (mask clearing, etc.), but it's more of an orientation dive.
By the time Sunday comes around, you've shown you know all the skills and that you can make the dives, so you get to have a fun pair of dives without needing to demonstrate any skills outside of normal buddy diving (although on the deco bar at the safety stop, you'll probably be asked to clear your mask and do some other skills, just to pass the time). They tell you the whole time about how Sunday is just a fun day where you don't have to worry about being tested and can just use your skills (which is, of course, technically a lie, as the "fun" dives are actually your final exam, but they don't tell the students that).
I suppose I could understand how going through a class and checkout dives (and probably paying a pretty penny for it) and never really getting to have just a fun dive wouldn't be very good at grabbing people. I suppose you have to train your students enough to be able to "set them free" (-ish) for a dive or two.
Is it true (it may or may not be) that one (or more?) of the big agencies says that getting your OW cert only means you're capable of diving with a DM/instructor? I heard that somewhere. (My book said something like, "...certified to dive in the conditions in which you were trained..." or whatever.) If you go through an entire class and checkout and at the end they tell you you're not good enough to dive yet, I can see how that wouldn't be encouraging (although it may indeed be true with McDivers).
Lehmann108:
I'd go with "hyperbole" over "apocryphal."
If he believed the numbers were vastly exaggerated, "hyperbole" would be a reasonable term. However, if he believed the numbers seemed rather fabricated, "apocryphal" would be a better fit. I'd say "apocryphal" is more akin to "anecdotal" than to "hyperbole" (although "anecdotal" implies the story is true, in similar usage, it would be used to say that the story is true but the conclusion is unsupported).
