Into the sea

Into the sea

Today was the day we were all back to what we were like all those months or years ago, when we got into the ocean for the very first time… Nervous and scared!

When we arrived at the Dive Center, the first thing we did was to present our briefings for the Open Water Exercises. We had to combine the two skills into one briefing, and my skills for today were the regulator recovery and clearing, and the partial mask flood. I think I am very lucky with these skills, but before I get to excited, we’ll just see how they go.

We drove to the Marina in several cars, fully loaded with tanks and equipment. When we got there, we set up our equipment, gathered our slates and thoughts together and got onto the boat.

It was a cold, windy day, so we are hoping that we won’t be in the water for too long, as you start to cool down very quickly after about 30 minutes.

The candidates with surface skills were up first, and the waves didn’t make it easier for them! I was lucky to have two underwater skills. Some of the skills were done very quickly, but others took about 10 to 15 minutes to complete both their skills and get their students (us) to do it. My skills went fine, really good actually, maybe to good! I am afraid I might have missed a problem that the Course Director / Examiner gives out, but we’ll see when we get our scores. Let’s hope it was all fine and I achieved a good score.

Because some of the candidates took so long to do their Open Water Exercises, we ended up in the water for 72 minutes, and this was only the time we spend under the water! Obviously, we were all shaking and wanting to get out by the end of it. Fortunately, when we were back in the marina, the sun was out to warm us up quickly.

We did our debriefs in the marina, packed up our equipment and had a nice English Breakfast for lunch.

Back at the dive center, we got our scores, and it turned out I had been worried for no reason at all. I scored two straight fives on my Open Water Exercises.

We listened to one more presentation; “Keep Diving”, and went home to do our homework for the next day; preparing more presentations!!

Wish me luck!

Love, Alice

A long day of listening

A long day of listening

Today we had a lot of presentations to listen to. 

We started with “Teaching in Open Water”, because tomorrow, we’ll be going into the ocean for our Open Water presentations.

David presented everything we needed to know for tomorrow, and we also had a group discussion, in which we got some very useful tips for tomorrow. 
One of the most important things is to try and help each other out, and not make things more difficult for each other, as everyone will be nervous anyway.

So we made sure we all knew who had which skills to do, and confirmed with our fellow candidates that everyone was able to perform the skills.

The next presentation on the list was about the “Open Water Diver course”. It was very enlightening to learn how to actually teach the Open Water Diver course in real life, toreal students, perhaps very soon!

Than we listened to the two very long presentations about “Risk Management”, that were similar to the presentations I listened to on my A.I. course.

To wake us up a bit, we spend the next two hours doing our own Knowledge Development presentations. Mine was about Rescue Assists, which turned out to be a fairly easy subject. There is a lot you can talk about, but you can make clear what you want to say without making the presentation too long.

I was a bit more relaxed for this second Knowledge Development presentation than for the first one, and I felt it went very well.  I was extremely pleased to get a 5.0, as these presentations where the assignments I was most nervous about in the whole IDC.

After that, we only had to listen to “The Marketing of Diving”, which was presented by Phil. He did really well, only he seemed a bit nervous, but I’m sure he’ll feel more confident soon, after doing a couple more presentations in front of the group.

After this long, long day of listening, I am looking forward to go diving again tomorrow, even though it means that we’ll be doing our Open Water Exercises tomorrow, one of the few things we are not allowed to do over, in the unlikely event of (PADI’s favorite quite, you should remember this if you’re thinking of ever doing your IDC course!) failing them!

Keep up to date about my experiences!

Love, Alice

Exams and more exams

Exams and more exams

Today is the second day of my IDC, and after a quick coffee, we all started our early morning with some exams! What more do you want when you just got up?

We have two different sets of exams to do; the General Standards, and the Theory Exams. The General Standards Exam is all about the PADI Instructor Manual and PADI Instructor Guide.

It is an open book exam and we had 1,5 hours to complete it. When English isn't your first language, you also get 50% more time to do any exams. Fortunately, I had already done a similar exam on my PADI Assistant Instructorcourse, so I knew more or less what to expect. 
In the last couple of weeks, I have been studying my PADI Instructor Manual almost daily.

After that, it was time for the Theory Exams. There are 5 chapters:

Physics                                (the one I struggle with most!)

Physiology          (I struggle with the long, unfamiliar words in this chapter)

Equipment         (I’m okay with this one, I learned a lot about equipment at work in the last months)

RDP (Recreational Dive Planner)              (I struggle with the tables, although I’m fine with the eRDPml)

Skills and Environment                 (No real issues with this one)

Again, we had 1,5 hours to do the second part of the exams, and I even had time left on these, because most of the questions were easier than I had expected!

After the exams, we had a lunch break, and very patiently (not!) waited for our exam results. I turned out to score 100% on everything! I knew I had done my best on my studying, but I did not expect the result to be that good, so I was thrilled!

In the afternoon, we listened to David’s presentations about Teaching in Confined Water and Developing Knowledge Development.  

Now we know what to expect about those, and tomorrow we will be doing our first Confined Water presentations in the pool and also our Knowledge Development presentations in the classroom. 

Lots of homework for tonight! 

After feeling quite relaxed today, from the moment I started my exams, I’m a bit more nervous about my upcoming presentations!

You can read about the presentations next week!

Love, Alice

The Big Day has come!!

The Big Day has come!!

Today is the big day, I’m going to start my IDC course! I didn’t really believe it yet when I woke up, but it really is time now.

Pete had offered to drop me off on the first day, so I didn’t have to stress about how to get there. On our way, it really became clear to me; “This is it!” My hands were shaking, that’s how nervous I was!

We arrived on the scene, I mean, Dive center, and walked through the door. I was lucky to had already met some of the people there; David, our PADI Course Director and Tim, our PADI Master Instructor.

I also met all my fellow IDC-candidates, and soon discovered we would be divided in two groups; Spanish and International. I was of course in the International group, who could all speak English. We had people from England, Ireland, Latvia, Hungarian and another Dutchy! Then there were also our two assisting (to be) PADI Staff Instructors: Phil, from Teide Divers, who I already knew, and Alexandro.

Pete stayed around for a little while, which was very reassuring, and David, our PADI Course Director, started the first presentation: Orientation. We received a schedule for the 7 days of the IDC, introduced ourselves and it soon became a lot clearer that it wasn’t all as scary as thought!

The IDC is developed to (as the name Instructor Development Course suggests) develop new Instructors, and to teach you everything you need to know. No one expects you to already know everything, because you’re only a Divemaster or Assistant Instructor! We are here to learn.

I feel very reassured, and already less stressed than in de last couple of weeks. Pete went back the Dive Center and the rest of the day we listened to more presentations about General Standards and the Business of Diving.

Tomorrow we will start the day with practice exams, to see where we are all up to, and what we need to work on over the next week.

I got a ride home from Lorcan, one of my fellow candidates on the IDC who owns a Dive Center in Gran Canaria, and after a quick drink with some of the DM interns and Pete and Melissa, I went home to do some of my last studying!

Wish me luck!

Love, Alice

Welcome to the IDC (Instructor Development Course) blog!

Welcome to the IDC (Instructor Development Course) blog!

My name is Alice and I am a newly certified PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor. On this page, I will share my experiences starting from my studying for my Instructor course, to my experiences as a new PADI Instructor.

Over 11 months ago I started my internship at Dive and Sea Tenerife. I came to Tenerife as a non-diver, looking for a new adventure.

In 8 weeks i managed to complete;
PADI Open Water Diver
PADI Advanced Open Water Diver
PADI Rescue Diver
PADI Master Scuba Diver
PADI Specialties
PADI Divemaster

After my internship, going back to the cold Holland where diving wasn’t an option (it’s cold!) for me, didn’t really appeal to me. So I stayed on for an additional 5 weeks to gain some more experience. The thing I had to work on most was navigation.. I seemed to end up in places I didn’t intent to go to more than just a few times..

After my 5 extra weeks, I was finally able to lead dives without getting lost, I gained a lot more diving experience (I went from just over 60 to 101 logged dives!!) and I had also completed my PADI Discover Scuba Diver Leader internship.

After my extended internship, I had been back to Holland for only a couple of weeks before I got a job offer from Dive and Sea Tenerife, which was more than I ever dreamed of! So within a very short period of time, I was back in the lovely Tenerife and started working as a Divemaster!

If you would like to read about the experiences of our Divemaster interns, check out our Divemaster internship blog's;

In English 
Or Dutch

In the last months, I have gained so much more experience with diving, customers, DSD’s, assisting with courses, all the other work behind the scenes that diving brings, I became a PADI Assistant Instructor and last but not least; a PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor!

I hope you will enjoy reading about my adventures, and I hope to give everyone who might be interested in doing the Instructor course a clear insight about what it is like!

Love, Alice