{"id":2403,"date":"2020-02-24T10:26:27","date_gmt":"2020-02-23T21:26:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diveski.co.nz\/blog\/?p=2403"},"modified":"2021-08-22T17:26:34","modified_gmt":"2021-08-22T05:26:34","slug":"living-the-dream-and-the-training-that-goes-with-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.diveski.co.nz\/blog\/2020\/02\/24\/living-the-dream-and-the-training-that-goes-with-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Living the dream….and the training that goes with it"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s face it, who as a diver hasn\u2019t been diving off the shores of a tropical island somewhere and taken a look at the dive instructors\/divemasters and thought \u2018you lucky buggers\u2019<\/p>\n

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For me it was in New Caledonia & I said to my buddy \u2018why the hell am I not doing this everyday\u2019 Cut forward to cold day at Kau Bay during the DM Training with strong winds, half and metre vis and a water temp of about 9 degrees I was starting to rethink my decisions.<\/p>\n

Of course we look back on it now and laugh and I realise that I have come out a much better diver because of days like that.<\/p>\n

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Although I (just about) had enough logged dives to meet the Divemaster course requirements I knew it was going to be a challenge, I hadn\u2019t done much cold water diving, I didn\u2019t know the Wellington dive sites, and despite having dived most of Asia I had always been with a guide or someone more experienced.<\/p>\n

Despite this, training began with skill circuits, the 24 skills you have to be able to demonstrate, then building on that you learn to recognise and anticipate problems then learning how to prevent them. While I wasn\u2019t the worst I wasn\u2019t the best either – it was a steep learning curve. I was constantly worried that I couldn\u2019t do this or I was going to mess it up. In hindsight everyone messes up and that the point- make mistakes and learn from them as well as everyone else\u2019s!<\/p>\n

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While you’re there doing it, it\u2019s hard to see how far you have come until one day, something happens and you just instinctively fix the problem and you realise \u2018I have totally got this!\u2019<\/p>\n

When you realise that your perception of diving has changed. It\u2019s not just about you and what your doing or even your buddy, you become aware or everyone on the boat. You become the one able to help and give advice rather than needing it.<\/p>\n

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You get to train with some truly fascinating people with heaps of experience from totally different walks of life but you all have something in common a love of the ocean. It\u2019s well known divers are a friendly bunch and the people you do your training will provide you with moral support when you need it most.<\/p>\n

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For example when you have got the group lost twice in one dive, when you have to slyly signal to a fellow DMT \u2018home?\u2019 and hope no one noticed. You all go through it together and usually come out laughing on the other side.<\/p>\n

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\nAnd 6 months on from that I\u2019m now a fully qualified open water instructor with my first full time job. Everyone knows you don\u2019t become a dive instructor for the money but even I was guilty of not realising quite how stressful and demanding it would be. Days can be long, and you spend a lot of time lugging heavy gear around and there is paperwork – lots of paperwork. While as a recreational diver you spend the dive looking at the beautiful underwater world around you as the instructor\/divemaster you spend a lot of your time looking at other divers, making sure they aren\u2019t doing something stupid and making sure everyone gets back to shore safely with at least some air in their tank.<\/p>\n

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Despite this there is no better feeling than introducing someone to this whole other world. That excited post dive chat like \u2018did you all see that massive….\u2019 and \u2018that …got so close to us!\u2019 When your teaching it\u2019s that moment when a skill clicks for someone and you see their eyes light up through their mask and all you can do is high five them and try not to drop your reg because your smiling so much.<\/p>\n

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Yes it requires patience and you have to be approachable and have the kind of calm personality that\u2019s puts people at ease as well as being able to explain things in different ways to accommodate different learning styles but it\u2019s awesome and I love it! passing on my love of scuba diving is massively rewarding and means I get paid to show people this beautiful world right here on our doorstep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s face it, who as a diver hasn\u2019t been diving off the shores of a tropical island somewhere and taken a look at the dive instructors\/divemasters and thought \u2018you lucky buggers\u2019   For me it was in New Caledonia & I said to my buddy \u2018why the hell am I not doing this everyday\u2019 Cut […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dive-course","category-general-interest","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diveski.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diveski.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diveski.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diveski.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diveski.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2403"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.diveski.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2416,"href":"https:\/\/www.diveski.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2403\/revisions\/2416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diveski.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diveski.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diveski.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}