Why is becoming a DM considered not worth it?

[amclaughlin200]

Hello!
I just recently fell in love with diving, like I've never liked anything in my life before, and I was thinking about getting my DM.
I know the reasons to do it change if from person to person but I'm wondering why so many people say doing the DM if you don't plan to work is useless.

My position is that I quit my job to travel last year and I am not ready to go back to normal life yet. I am considering doing DM for the following reasons:
- I want to become a better diver and I want to challenge myself and learn more
- I want to spend a few months diving and volunteering at a dive shop. I do not exclude the idea of actually working in the field if I love it so much after the course, I am open and right now I don't know where life will take me
- I've got prices from a few places I've been diving at and doing the DM course is significantly cheaper (like half the cost) than just doing fun dives for the same amount of time


But apart from that, especially as it works out cheaper this way, why is everyone so against it?

Your opinion is welcome, thank you!

First of all, if you have fallen in love with diving, have the means to take the course, and could see yourself potentially working in the industry one day, you should absolutely do it! I'm not sure who exactly "everyone" is when you say people are discouraging you from it, but remember, their are a lot of cynical divers out there. My assumption of why people are discouraging you is because one of your main reasons is to become a better diver. Although taking the divemaster course will certainly improve your overall skills as a diver, its probably not the most efficient way for the price and arguably unnecessary for anyone who doesn't ever want to work in the industry. It really is mostly about working with students etc, although once again this will naturally improve your diving skills.

So finally, heres why I mainly disagree with anyone who says you don't need to take the divemaster course to become a better diver. Although the course itself may not turn you into Jacques Cousteau 2.0, the best way to become a better diver is to dive your freaking brains out. And for MOST people, that is really not possible for financial reasons.....Unless you're getting paid to dive. If you're an AOW diver who does 1 trip a year, its pretty hard to get that diving muscle memory in terms of buoyancy etc...Although not impossible! If you wanna become a better diver, dive dive dive! Having that certification will unlock MORE opportunities for you to be in the water, which is what, in my opinion, makes a better diver.

Lastly, just because I feel this is important, I would recommend becoming an instructor if you plan on doing anything professional in the industry at all. I mean, divemaster would be fine if you want to volunteer the odd weekend at your local shop, but really anything more I feel like going on to instructor is almost necessary. Again I will reiterate, its not necessarily because becoming an instructor will make you a better diver, but it will once again broaden your opportunities. The reason I say this is because some people may think "Oh I would love to work on a liveaboard and guide divers but I don't really want to teach courses." Well in theory, you could guide divers, but in my experience working as an instructor on 3 different continents, none of the shops or liveaboards I've worked at have ever hired a divemaster. Why? Well because truthfully becoming a dive instructor isn't really all that hard. And there are loads of instructors out there, so even for a position that is mostly just dive guiding, the company always wants to hire an instructor because they have more "experience." But as you know divemaster is a step before instructor so it doesn't hurt to get divemaster now and assess becoming an instructor later!


I hope this is helpful! Good luck in your diving journey.

P.S. Even if you don't ever work professionally, its still cool to tell your non-diving friends you're a divemaster.

 

[Wibble]

... becoming an instructor will make you a better diver, but it will once again broaden your opportunities.

Experience is key. If you're only ever doing simple early-days training, then you've hardly got the time and opportunity to improve your skills.

First of all, if you have fallen in love with diving, have the means to take the course, and could see yourself potentially working in the industry one day, you should absolutely do it! I'm not sure who exactly "everyone" is when you say people are discouraging you from it, but remember, their are a lot of cynical divers out there.

Many of us are divers who want to go well beyond basic skills and have worked on our skills to enable more challenging diving: deeper, longer, overhead, wreck penetration, CCR... We see many DiveMasters and instructors with mediocre skills when measured against higher standards. This is where the cynicism breeds.

To gain higher skills you need people around you with superior skills. Someone who's done hundreds of Discover Scuba dives doesn't necessarily need the best skills nor would be exposed to the best skills during their day job.

To be a better diver... Sign up for some technical training and practice those skills. You'd be better at everything as you're properly in control.


(I'm interested in this DiveMaster course simply as a good crack to go somewhere nice for a couple of months and play at being a DiveMaster)

 

[amclaughlin200]

Experience is key. If you're only ever doing simple early-days training, then you've hardly got the time and opportunity to improve your skills.


Many of us are divers who want to go well beyond basic skills and have worked on our skills to enable more challenging diving: deeper, longer, overhead, wreck penetration, CCR... We see many DiveMasters and instructors with mediocre skills when measured against higher standards. This is where the cynicism breeds.

To gain higher skills you need people around you with superior skills. Someone who's done hundreds of Discover Scuba dives doesn't necessarily need the best skills nor would be exposed to the best skills during their day job.

To be a better diver... Sign up for some technical training and practice those skills. You'd be better at everything as you're properly in control.


(I'm interested in this DiveMaster course simply as a good crack to go somewhere nice for a couple of months and play at being a DiveMasterT

 

[amclaughlin200]

I respect your opinion and tec diving is a great tool to enhance your skills. But this person literally said they "just" fell in love with diving and may potentially want to work in the industry. I think its best to get comfortable in the recreational world first.

Experience is key. If you're only ever doing simple early-days training, then you've hardly got the time and opportunity to improve your skills.


Many of us are divers who want to go well beyond basic skills and have worked on our skills to enable more challenging diving: deeper, longer, overhead, wreck penetration, CCR... We see many DiveMasters and instructors with mediocre skills when measured against higher standards. This is where the cynicism breeds.

To gain higher skills you need people around you with superior skills. Someone who's done hundreds of Discover Scuba dives doesn't necessarily need the best skills nor would be exposed to the best skills during their day job.

To be a better diver... Sign up for some technical training and practice those skills. You'd be better at everything as you're properly in control.


(I'm interested in this DiveMaster course simply as a good crack to go somewhere nice for a couple of months and play at being a DiveMaster)

I think its important to use the context of the original post to identify what a good course of action is. 1)This person said they "just" fell in love with diving. 2)They potentially want to volunteer or work at a dive shop. 3) They have mentioned budget in their post.

I wouldn't recommend a newer diver to take a tec class right away when they've expressed interest in something else. Sometimes its best to bring a ballplayer up through the system and not promote them directly to the majors.

To work or volunteer at a dive shop they would want to take the professional recreational route first. I can't imagine the market for a tec instructor who started diving a year ago is super hot.

For the 3rd point, they mentioned cost several times in their post. Tec is expensive as heck.

 

[Lorenzoid]

I was just thinking to update this thread as I am now close to finish my DM, after 1 and half month. I can safely say it MASSIVELY improved my diving skills and I don't understand people that say it doesn't.
My buoyancy, my trip, my kicking are so much better. I'd say the skills is the last thing as it's the thing I've done the least I will have to work on them before being certified, but it definitely made me become a better diver.

For the last time, I'll repeat my belief that few, if any, comments in this thread asserted that the DM course would not improve your diving skills. See my thoughts in this post upthread: Why is becoming a DM considered not worth it? I'm glad your buoyancy, trim, and propulsion skills have improved, but you could have gotten the same improvement or more from a 4 or 5 day skills workshop or Intro-to-Tech type course without all the additional baggage that goes with learning to be a divemaster.

 

[Zef]

For the last time, I'll repeat my belief that few, if any, comments in this thread asserted that the DM course would not improve your diving skills. See my thoughts in this post upthread: Why is becoming a DM considered not worth it? I'm glad your buoyancy, trim, and propulsion skills have improved, but you could have gotten the same improvement or more from a 4 or 5 day skills workshop or Intro-to-Tech type course without all the additional baggage that goes with learning to be a divemaster.

Not to mention, that one should more or less already have those skills refined before commencing the Divemaster course...the fact that one could take the course to become a Divemaster and have loads of improvement to make is not a testament to how much the the OP gained but more a general lack of standards for becoming a profesional in the dive industry.

Perhaps the amount the OP improved is directly related to their general lack of experience before taking the course. Quoted from post #1 of this discussion thread:

Hello!
I just recently fell in love with diving, like I've never liked anything in my life before, and I was thinking about getting my DM....

#sigh
#zero-to-hero
#SMH
#sigh

-Z

 

[Wibble]

I respect your opinion and tec diving is a great tool to enhance your skills. But this person literally said they "just" fell in love with diving and may potentially want to work in the industry. I think its best to get comfortable in the recreational world first.

I think its important to use the context of the original post to identify what a good course of action is. 1)This person said they "just" fell in love with diving. 2)They potentially want to volunteer or work at a dive shop. 3) They have mentioned budget in their post.

I wouldn't recommend a newer diver to take a tec class right away when they've expressed interest in something else. Sometimes its best to bring a ballplayer up through the system and not promote them directly to the majors.

To work or volunteer at a dive shop they would want to take the professional recreational route first. I can't imagine the market for a tec instructor who started diving a year ago is super hot.

For the 3rd point, they mentioned cost several times in their post. Tec is expensive as heck.

I was talking about the skills improvement.

As @Lorenzoid said, skills improvement is generally quite cheap at a few days for a course (plus many more days of practice).

Technical diving isn't that much more expensive than doing a DiveMaster course. The basic core skills benefit all styles of diving and are essential for more advanced diving -- photography?

 

[Leatherboot69]

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.

 

[Leatherboot69]

Not to mention, that one should more or less already have those skills refined before commencing the Divemaster course...the fact that one could take the course to become a Divemaster and have loads of improvement to make is not a testament to how much the the OP gained but more a general lack of standards for becoming a profesional in the dive industry.

Perhaps the amount the OP improved is directly related to their general lack of experience before taking the course. Quoted from post #1 of this discussion thread:


#sigh
#zero-to-hero
#SMH
#sigh

-Z

Not necessarily true. PADI professional standard is about performing the skill in a highly prescriptive manner to teach it to someone else. You can have mastered it but still have work to teach or demonstrate it in the prescribed way.

 

[Leatherboot69]

I was talking about the skills improvement.

As @Lorenzoid said, skills improvement is generally quite cheap at a few days for a course (plus many more days of practice).

Technical diving isn't that much more expensive than doing a DiveMaster course. The basic core skills benefit all styles of diving and are essential for more advanced diving -- photography?

The kit is though. And doing a tec course would mean even more skills that I’d never use than on a DM course