Counseling

Gary Tytler counsels Helen Davies & David Wiley during their IDC.

Another IDC has come to a close and all six of our candidates passed. It’s amazing how you can actually see students improve and mature through just the one 10-day course. There are easy IDCs. There are really hard ones and then there are some like these, that start out on shaky ground, seem to improve only to crash down in fits of tears and frustration about halfway through and then crescendo into triumph in the end.

Tomorrow the Instructor Exam begins and the biggest enemy to all our candidates will be nerves. Some are just fidgety. Some fret the academics but will be fine if they get a lot of sleep tonight. Some are skating through on water skills, but should be OK. We at Aquanauts are often like expectant parents waiting to see the results or, really, like the parents of kindergartners sending them off to the wilds of the IE, knowing we did our best and hoping its enough.

Over the past 10 days, we talked and talked at the students, at times more sternly than others. But at the end of the IDC comes the part we really wait for: Counseling. This is the point where Course Directors John Taylor and Roger Smith tell the students whether they’ve passed and where they need to be particularly meticulous in the IE. But the best part is its where the students can say what they thought of not only the IE, but the entire internship itself.

Aquanauts has been doing instructor training since 2001, but only launched its DivingInstructorTraining.com website to market the current-format internships two years ago this month. As you’d expect, there’s been a bit of learning involved. But, as we stress so often, the beauty of our program is that we’re small and that you, as a customer, have access to the owners of the company every day of the week.

As a result, we have always been very responsive to constructive criticism and feedback. A lot of that comes during counseling. We’ve learned and improved the program over time. Some of the enhancements that have come from feedback:

• We implemented a comprehensive monthly schedule of all the free bonus courses we offer, weekly DM/IDC skills development days and a full list of deadlines for instructor training
• More tutoring, making instructors available in the shop every day of the week for more one-on-one work, upon request.
• Better definition of a divemaster trainee’s “internship work.” We never make people pump tanks, clean toilets, etc. but we do have you perform duties related to becoming a better, well-rounded dive professional.

Again, it’s a hallmark of our small program that we listen and respond to each customer individually. So, if you’re reading this while deciding where to go, remember that you need to find a place where the bosses are there for you every day, where your personal needs are attended to and that at the end of the IDC you, like all of our people today, had absolutely no complaints about their internship experience.