Good & bad in OW training

When you took your Open Water course, what was it about your course that was exceptionally good? What was exceptionally bad? What would you have liked to have as a part of your class that wasn't there? What was there that shouldn't have been? Add in any thoughts you'd like. I hope we all learn from this......

Since it was such a long time ago, the one thing that I wish they would have had was something tied to rescue-something we all need to be familiar with!!!

DBD

The one thing I remember about my OW class (almost 10 years ago) was how I thought there seemed like too many people in it for the individualized training that I had hoped to get. What I liked about it, as opposed to classes that I see advertised now, is that it was several weeks in length, and there wasn't as much "study at home" material - we did a lot of classroom work, numerous pool dives over those weeks, and then concluded with OW. I would have liked more buoyancy work in the OW class.

Having progressed through a few additional classes, the classes were all smaller - sometimes almost private - and I had mixed emotions. I really liked the smaller, more individualized style, but think I like classes with about 4-6 people in it best so that there are other people to learn from (their successes and/or opportunity areas), not to mention the opportunity to share some of my stress (like in the DM class).

My rescue class was by far my best class - or maybe considered my most useful - but more from a personal knowledge, not necessarily skill, standpoint. I don't know if I think that OW students are ready to get that info. at that point, but I defintiely think it c/should be more incorporated into Advanced OW, or whatever the equiv. is to the organizations that are not on the "dark side" (heh heh)

I like that we got right into using the gear, I was expecting more dos-n-donts stuff.

Would have liked to have some more "playtime" to pratice bouyancy and other stuff.

My instructor always answered any question...any question...and never made anyone feel like they asked dumb ones...

Mine (PADI OW) had eight students, which was at least four too many. And although the instructor was a nice chap and good fun, I found the course too easy. I knew there were lots of things I needed to know to be a good diver, and they simply weren't covered.

I started training with BSAC which went too far the other way, and I dropped out for lack of time and lack of interest.

I was happy to get started when I took my OW class. I had wanted to Scuba Dive since I was a kid. The only problems We had were, taking it in late August in a cold water area. Nothing like sitting around waiting for everyone in a 7mm wetsuit in 90+ degree weather. And the one other thing I remember having a problem with was the one student... A lady who was in my opinion very dangerous. She shot like a missle to the surface in the pool between me and my neighbor while we were above her, and at least 5 times a class, either in the pool or in the classroom she would ask in a fingernail across the chalkboard sounding voice "DO YOUR EARS HURT????" I can still hear it ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGG. I don't know if her husband was trying to off her or what, but he singed her up for the class and this poor woman seemed to have every ailment known to man. She even did her OW certification dives on the great barrier reef! On her written test "multiple choice section" she put two answers for several questions, stating well it could be either this one or that one. I have to say that the instructor and all the other students in our class were very much fun to be around! The best thing I liked about taking my OW class was the fact that I actually took it and started my life long dream!

The good..... There were suppose to be six of us in class. I was the only one that didnt cancel and the classes were held anyway. I got private lessons for the regular price.

The bad..... It was in the dead of winter in NC and had to do the four dives in a dry suit....which for the Seatle area isnt a big deal...in the South....it just made it that much more interesting at the quarry.

rich

The first day of my AOW checkout was at Dutch Springs Quarry, in Bethlehem, PA. The instructor told me and my buddy what sites at the quarry he wanted us to visit, but he told us that we couldn't use a map of the quarry sites that was available at the entrance to the facility.

However, we obtained a copy of the map on the sly and very competently visited the assigned sites. Later that evening, over some beers, we confided in the Instructor that we got a hold of a map. He laughed and told us that that was just what he wanted--that we had enough diving saavy to disregard a stupid order.

Rick


When a finger points at the moon, the imbecile examines the finger.--Buddha

I took an OW course? Hey, Walter... come on. It was the 60's. You don't expect me to actually remember anything from the 60's do you?

Mine was LAC certification. I had already been diving 8 years when I got certified. I was probably a bit of an intellectual know-it-all and questioned some of the rigid assumptions of my instructor, an excellent individual but a do-it-by-the-book military man. He drove us to do things right and would not certify us until we did. It was also a much longer course than most taught today. I appreciated that rigor.

One thing I do remember... there were very few (no?) women in the course, at least not that I remember.

Our first checkout dive was at Arrow Point on Catalina's leeward coast. What a great place to start 36 years of diving here. We did three checkout dives as I remember, all off the Golden Doubloon out of San Pedro. At the end of the dives, I was picked up by the boat from the school I was teaching at that fall. My first trip to Catalina was on a dive boat!!

Edited by drbill, 31 July 2005 - 08:02 PM.

My OW course was very forgettable. Our instructor had his stepdaughter and her best friend in the same course and paid more attention to them than to the other students.

To be honest, I really felt nervous about having passed the course. Lip service was given to the buddy system as we had an odd number of students and I was the odd man out. I didn't exactly help as I had read the home study stuff for a month before I took the course and basically had it memorized by then. The pool skills were boring to me and I learned buoyancy control as a solution to ear problems (in other words slow ascents and descents give you time to clear your ears or recognize that they won't clear and abort the dive).

I got to OW and I should have (by rights) been required to do a couple of more dives. I lost my weight pouch a couple of times and basically issues with my first exposure to cold water made these a less than perfect series of dives. The funny thing is that on my first fun dive after my Open Water, I actually had fun. I think that I still have a golf ball off the bottom from that dive.

And that instructor that I had issues with? He is our DiveCon Instructor as well. He did a beautiful job in that course. He teaches one OW class per year to stay current, but just doesn't have the patience to deal with OW anymore. I would take him in an instant for any course about OW. And, I chalk up many issues that I had with him during my OW course to be personality conflicts at that time.

Oh Wow!! Where to start? I took my open water in April-May of 1963 and was certified on June 1. I actually had been diving for some time before this and my training had consisted of reading the fifteen or twenty page instruction manual that came with the Aqualung Mistral regulator that I had ordered out of the back of Popular Mechanics Magazine. That little manual told you everything you needed to know about scuba diving!! My instructor for the certification course (There was a rumor going around that someone was going to require a card showing you had actually had a formal course of instruction in order to sell you scuba gear and fill tanks) was Joe Cody, the Dallas Police detective who arrested Lee Harvey Oswald after the Kennedy assassination. Since PADI did not yet exist and no other organization (YMCA was four years old and NAUI was three) in town offered scuba training, I was certified under SCIP (Southwest Council Instructor Program). I remember it as para-military training (drop and give me twenty--in full scuba gear), interminable pool laps ( a scuba diver must be able to swim a mile in full gear), pointless skill drills (I don't think I did another ditch-and-don until I underwent NAUI instructor training), classroom training twice a week for six weeks ("What do you mean you can't do this problem using the Navy dive tables, maggot?!!!"), all-male classes ("This is not a sport for girls or sissies, maggot"), the very real possibility of failing the course ("Twenty percent of you will not pass this course--I guarantee it!!"), and, of course learning the use of the most modern and up-to-date equipment (Mistral double-hose regulator, small-bore snorkel, jet fins, 1800cft steel tanks and weight belts with no BCDs). "Are we having fun yet, sir?"

On the other hand, I remember the wonder of actually being able to breathe underwater (Albeit through that Mistral double-hose reg that probably required 3-4 inches of water column to draw), swimming with the most colorful fish I could possibly imagine (No one had a salt-water aquarium at that time and we had not seen these creatures), the development of a camaraderie with some of the legends of scuba diving (Captain Blood, John Cannon, John Cronin and others), learning pride in the equipment I could afford to buy (And that equipment I couldn't afford but bought anyway) and the meticulous care I took in caring for that equipment. We were taught self-sufficiency, attention to detail, and discipline. Much of the technical information I was taught was later proven to be wrong and I've seen the sport come a long way. Training has come a long way and has changed in ways we never could have imagined. In most ways it is better, more accurate, and designed to produce a safer beginning diver. Today's training is not as difficult or demanding (macho) as the early sixties. It is geared toward a different generation of divers. There are some things I wish we had kept (a longer course with more practice and drills to develop skills, proper equipment maintenance, self and buddy rescue skills--NAUI has some of this but could use more, one-on-one supervision in open water and the requirement to demonstrate a comfort level that satisfied the instructor's subjective evaluation, and a few others). But, all-in-all we have certifying agencies that turn out safe (the overall accident rate has plummeted since the 1970's--we are now rated as one of the safest most accident-free sports you can participate in), competent divers.

I was privileged to get in on the ground floor of one of the most exciting and satisfying activities I could possibly imagine. I was privileged to receive continuous training from several different agencies and instructors over four decades. I was privileged to meet Jaques Cousteau, Emile Gagnan, Hans Hass, and Zale Parry (You mean women can scuba dive???and cute ones, too). I never met Lloyd Bridges but he was my hero. I dove Cozumel when there were no paved roads, the reefs were not named, and part of the island had electricity for part of the day. The open water trained diver of today is better equipped, better trained and more competent than I was when I started. The open water diver of today is the beneficiary of those four decades of learning on the part of the certifying agencies and the instructors who teach for them. Certainly some instructors are better at teaching than others but, overall, I believe the agencies and instructors of today deserve a pat on the back for a job well done.

Well what I remember you don't want to hear, the course was $99 and that was before PADI split it up. You got everything that's now part of AOW, rescue, boat diver, Wrecks, Marine ID, you name it. For a few bucks more I got a YMCA card too but that has since turned to dust.
I had been diving before that but by 1971 you couldn't get air without a C-card, interestingly I got a nitrox fill over the weekend in a new shop and they didn't ask for my eanX card.
Here I am on one of my check out dives at Willow Springs in Pa. with "state of the art equipment"

I was just certified the beginning of the summer and I think that the course went quite well and I feel like I learned a lot! I think that I would have liked to have more dives, more practice with bouyancy, and actually maybe even a couple of more days of class to make time for it all or maybe another weekend at the lake! My class was small, about 6 total students, which was about right I think. I would have liked to learn more about how to care for equipment and more about rescue in case something bad should happen. I feel quite comfortable in the water with an experienced buddy but I wouldn't feel comfortable diving with another "newbie" such as myself.

My OW class was so long ago 1998. But I do remember that after the class was finished wondering if I now knew enough to be safe or dangerous. My first dives after OW were in Hawaii. Nothing like the OW dives I made in Seattle.

My class was about 8 but I do remember having at least 4 DM's or DM's in training at every class and during our OW dives. I always knew that an experienced diver was near if I need any assistance. I was glad that my instructor made sure that he had more than enough help. Not only did these DM's watch us they are there to answer questions and help us master the skills needed to complete our class.

Edited by gis_gal, 01 August 2005 - 10:20 PM.

I took my OW two years ago. There were five of us, which seemed reasonable, except it was a little tight in the pool for the pool exercises.

As other's have mentioned, more supervised with tips buoyancy practice/playtime would have been useful, though my instructor did give some valuable tips that definitely helped and guided my practice on future dives.

My instructor was not particularly good at the technical/math aspects (self described as a very "liberal arts" guy). He knew all the information he needed to as far as meeting the teaching requirements of the class generally, but some of my more involved questions were lost on him.

I like that SSI provided work to be done at home prior to class. I just wish the other students had actually done it all. We could then have spent more time with valuable supervised hands-on practice and less reviewing their weak grasp of some of the academic material.

We were doing our lake dives with very poor visibility, and I think my instructor should have done a bit more to make sure everyone stayed underwater enough on the guided dives (rather than some losing site of the buddy almost immediately and needing to surface to follow protocol, but then not having the amount of supervised underwater instruction that should be had). It was a tough situation. We probably should have had at least one DM assistant just because of the visibility conditions.

That all said, I think everyone of us appeared to have had enough education at the end to get our 'cert to keep learning/practice'.

I also like that we had enough time at the end of the last dive in the class that our instructor encouraged us to make a plan and make our own fun dive while all the instruction was fresh in our minds. Four of us did that and we did a fairly challenging dive (we descended below a thermocline so we dealt with cold water for a portion of it, we navigated a planned course, and amazingly we all kept together in that horrible visibility). We had clearly improved a whole lot from our first couple dives just the day before!

Edited by leaudaustin, 01 August 2005 - 11:16 PM.