What was the rest of the "work" like? Long days as part of the team?
Was the training explicit, or more like continual mentoring?
Do you lead dives with customers?
Only curious as to what's involved with the course.
My experience will be different to Issa’s, but having completed mine with a PADI centre in the U.K., mine was spread out around the dive centre’s business operations as and when I could complete it rather than as a single course. I received some training, to help me pass certain tests (such as the Rescue Scenario, as I had done Rescue Diver many years ago, and never had to use the training). There are some watermanship/fitness tests, which were demanding enough that they weren’t attendance passes (eg the cut off time to swim 400m). Some of the training objectives were self driven (eg the mapping exercise, where I buddied up with another DMT and we went off on our own and mapped out a local dive site). About a quarter of the time was spent on ‘workshops’, where we would work through the delivery of a particular course or activity (such as leading a guided dive), either with other DMTs role playing as customers, or with real customers under close supervision from an instructor. And another quarter was spent on practical assessments, where I had to act as a DM with real customers whilst under assessment by an instructor, eg helping to deliver a course, leading a dive, things like that. These were all done from start to finish, from setting up, receiving divers, briefing and kitting up at the start to debriefing and signing log books at the end. In between all of these specified activities there was lots of assisting instructors in the pool to build experience, improve the basics and get to understand dive centre operations whilst essentially working as a member of staff. It’s quite self driven and not really like a formal ‘course’ - I see why people describe it as an apprenticeship. If I was to do it again I would probably seek out a bit more formal training. I tended to teach myself and then go straight into some of the assessments, but having a few more opportunities to practice is always good. I took about a year, doing a day of diving (2-3 dives) and one to two pool sessions per month average.
There’s a lot of dogma around about ‘go and do a tec course’ and ‘DM is an inefficient way to become a better diver’. I don’t agree with this. I did my DM course because I wanted to be a better diver. Better for me, once I’ve mastered the basics, means being responsible for other people, more so than individual skills such as buoyancy, all of which improved as I was diving more, and having to perform different tasks centred around looking after other divers; leadership and teamwork in a dive environment, which a DM course teaches, is another aspect. Also, the DM course doesn’t expect you to have ‘professional level skills’ when you start, and you don’t need professional level skills to dive recreationally. It does require you to master core diving skills by the time you finish, as a central standard, so you can demonstrate in a very prescribed way to a student. So - do I systematically work through ‘Signal, Orientate, switch to Regulator, check Time, Elevate low pressure inflator, Descend’ every time I descend when I’m diving personally? No, of course not - it’s much more fluid and subconscious, yet still safe and competent. But the DM course required me to be able to demonstrate the individual steps, slowly, clearly and in an exaggerated manner to teach them to someone else underwater.
Fundamentally a lot of people want to do the DM course because it’s accessible, fun and a logical step both skills and cost-wise, and fewer people want to jump all the way to tec diving.
I will have to work on them before being certified, but it definitely made me become a better diver.
