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

Only a week to go now…!!

Only a week to go now…!!

It’s a strange feeling, I have known I would be doing my Instructor course this month,  but I now realize I got used to the feeling that it’s still do far away.
Now it is suddenly coming very close, and that’s a bit scary.

I have been studying a lot, starting a couple of months ago, when I did my PADI Assistant Instructor course.
The problem is, as soon as you don’t use the information for a while, you forget most of it!
I have seen two more A.I. courses, of which one was only a couple of weeks before my Instructor course.






My experience is that it was very helpful to do my A.I. course and repeat the information a couple of times.
The first couple of days are always just trying to figure out what it’s all really about, and than it starts making sense.
It’s not as difficult as it seems at first, as long as you try to look at the bigger picture instead of focusing on the details too much.




The chapters Equipment, RDP (Recreational Dive Planner) and Skills and Environment were no big problem.
It was all about just reading all my PADI manuals again, plus I learned a  lot from the PADI Diving Knowledge Workbook!

My problem chapters were Physiology and Physics.
Fortunately, I was lucky enough to have a very helpful and experienced Master Instructor to help me out!

Many thanks again to Pete, for always being there for me as my mentor!

Another thing that helped me a lot with remembering all the things I needed to know, was visualizing.
I have been working though my manuals and writing all the important stuff down, in pictures!

My sheets won’t make any sense to anyone else, as things like hemoglobin’s turned into Goblins who liked carbon monoxide and stuff like that… get it? ;-)


So now, closer than ever to my upcoming Instructor course,
I feel like if I keep repeating these last things, I will be well prepared, or as good as I can, for my IDC.

I have no new things to learn anymore, only repeating what I (should!) already know.

On the other hand, despite all the stories I’ve heard around me from other divers and Instructors, I still have no idea what to expect!



I will keep y’all up to date, for now, I’m off studying again, don’t want to waste one more minute! ;-)

Keep reading,


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