Internships: The Long & the Short of It

David "Mo" Morrison, left, and Jonathan Rhind (Click to enlarge.)

There are a lot of roads to the PADI Instructor Exam and not all of them are smooth.

Mo Morrison and Jonathan Rhind know that only too well. If they were like most Aquanauts Diving Instructor Training interns, they would have spent four continuous months diving, studying, training and enjoying a relaxed holiday lifestyle. But due to their work schedules, that just wasn’t possible. For them, Aquanauts created custom programs.

For Morrison, who only gets a month from his security job in Iraq each quarter, it would take 13 months to reach his goal of becoming a PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor. For Rhind, who had only two months off from bar manager job in Spain, went from Advanced Open Water Diver to OWSI in just two months.

“The first four weeks cruised by relaxing and slow,” Rhind recalled. “But suddenly February came and I saw the pre-IDC coming and everything started speeding up. I looked at the large stack of books on my desk and thought there’s so much to do and a long way to go. I’m just not going to have enough time.”

He did, but just barely. Thirty-six hours after passing the IE, he was on a plane back home and to work. “I feel like I need a holiday,” he joked.

Unlike Rhind, who plans to start work this summer at a dive center in Spain, Morrison, 40, enrolled in his internship for “personal achievement.” He never really planned to make it a career. So when he got to Pattaya among the many younger, eager, career-minded interns “I thought, ‘oh my God, have I made a mistake?’”

He dug in and began knocking out the courses. His first month he did his Emergency First Response and Rescue Diver course. Two months later, upon his return, he began the Divemaster course and did many of his PADI specialty courses. Two months later he finished Divemaster and then, in December, did his Instructor Development Course.

But he didn’t go to the IE. Course Directors Roger Smith and John Taylor just didn’t’ think his skills were there.

“I was gutted,” Morrison recalled of his darkest day of the internship. “It was the last day of the IDC and I just had to find the motivation to finish that day so I could say I completed a full IDC.”

Looking back, he feels that he might have, in fact, passed the IE had he gone. But he acknowledges that it was not a hardship for him to return in February and that he was, indeed, better after this February’s IDC.

That IDC was one that Rhind didn’t think he’d make it through. His darkest hour came on Day 4, the final day of the Assistant Instructor portion of the course. He’d been sick with a throat infection and on medication that hobbled his concentration.

“I was ready to give up and come back next year to finish,” Rhind said. “I just didn’t feel my knowledge and skills were where they needed to be. I was still concentrating on me when as an instructor you need to pay attention to everyone else.”

In both Jon and Mo’s cases, it was some “special counseling” from Master Instructor and Aquanauts co-owner Gary Tytler that got them through.

“Gary gave me that look and convinced me to just stick it out one more day,” Rhind said. “By the morning, I had finished the antibiotics and I thought, ‘it’s just one more week. You can make it.’”

Both did and with impressive scores.

“I was surprised how well I did,” Rhind said. “But that just shows how well John, Roger and Gary prepare you. It was very obvious when we got on the boat the last day. Our presentations were better than everyone else, our skills were better and our rescues were better.”

Even though they both reached their goal, neither man says he recommends others follow their routes to the IE.

“Every time I came back it was like starting over,” Morrison said. “You spend the first few days getting your gills back and then you’re on the next course, the next specialty.”

“I had two days off the entire time,” Rhind said. “You just cannot go out and enjoy what Pattaya has to offer.”

That’s not to say it can’t be done, as both Mo and Jon proved. If it’s a choice between doing the internship and not, then, they said, go ahead and do it.

“But it will be harder,” Rhind said. “To do it, you have to be mentally prepared to do nothing else.”

Morrison’s advice to someone in his position would be to spend the time away to finish all the academic work and studying then come to Pattaya, get any specialties out of the way quickly and work on “skills, skills, skills” with the rest of the time.

Despite their frenetic training schedules, neither have any regrets.

“It was a great experience,” Rhind said. “Great people, great environment.”

Even Morrison has changed his thinking toward working in the industry.

“I might actually consider doing it if I were laid off or needed to fill a couple months,” he said. “Never say never.”