This weekend I DMT’d another OW Referral, with instructors TB and BM, fellow DMT OB, and 9 students. TB and I took 4 of them, alternating the groups between the pool and the classroom. It all went smoothly tho’ inevitably there is some waiting around when sharing facilities like that. One thing I am noticing is that there is a lot packed into the videos at OW level that isn’t introduced until much later in the PADI system, such as CBLs and SMBs. Interesting.

One student didn’t complete this time, tho’ a careful reading of the syllabus reveals that actually, the two things she couldn’t manage (the 200m swim and the 10min float) don’t have to be done during the Referral, just prior to finishing the Completion, so she was signed off for everything else, which she had no problems with. I can’t remember if she planned to complete with us, or on her upcoming trip. And the student who hadn’t completed the last OW Referral I assisted on returned on Sunday, and did Dive 3 successfully this time, and went through the exam. Good for him! He can go onto PADI Scuba Diver now, with two open water dives, which he could do in one day. The “instructors creed” in the PADI instructors manual may be a bit cheesy, but it’s completely true. I am not privy to the commercials, but as far as I know, since we were running the course anyway, he was simply able to join in rather than paying for a new course. I don’t sense that there is any pressure to rubberstamp students at LSD; we work with them until they are able to meet the performance standards. That puts paid to quite a bit of criticism of “the PADI way” that I have seen online.

Speaking of sign-offs, I am collecting the required signatures gradually; with any luck by the end of the month I will be about halfway to completing the DM course. Neither particularly quickly nor particularly slowly as these things go. From next month I plan to focus more intently on filling in the gaps, choosing what I intern on with that in mind, as up ’til now I have just been doing a bit of everything to build general experience. I’d also like to get some time with my Lead Instructor LC to do/get signed off on specific skills.