After a month of intense diving in the Philippines, it was time to get back into study! This time I was extremely fortunate to be hosted by Dive Centre Manly in Sydney, where I would be undertaking my PADI Instructor Development Course (IDC).
This was a week of intense training, where my course director Richard Nicholls, known to most people as Tricky, would be training us to be PADI Instructors. I was lucky enough to be undertaking this course with three others including Ali, Michael and Rob.
This was an amazing opportunity to undertake further dive training but this time at a professional level. I also saw this training as a unique opportunity to be able to give back now and into the future to younger people or those interested in entering the incredible underwater world, as attaining my diving certification was the trigger that set my 15-year-old self on my career path.
The seven-day IDC was a mixture of both classroom training and practical training. This training really was amazing, particularly trying to remember back to undertaking my Open Water course nearly ten years ago, and how it was to be a new diver. The more you dive, the more things just become innate, so undertaking this course really made me look at my own diving habits and think about the fact that others will soon be looking to me to teach them the things that to me seem like the basics.
In the classroom we received a range of training in terms of developing to be an instructor – how to teach, how to be a mentor, the most effective and different methods for teaching, trouble-shooting, how to give presentations and feedback to students. Then, we spent a mixture of time in the pool learning how to teach confined-water sessions, and then we extended this further to the ocean, where we undertook a range of teaching skills, scenarios and presentations in the open ocean.
It was fantastic undertaking this course with a group of people with various backgrounds. Everyone was dedicated to achieving the best and all driven to becoming the best instructors they could.
By the end of this intense week, we had all received the training to become fully qualified PADI Instructors. This meant that, if we passed our Instructor Examination (IE), we would be able to teach students courses including Open Water, Advanced Open Water, Rescue Diver as well as Dive Master.
After sitting my IE back at home in Tasmania, with Mark Cummings and Damian Jones, my examiners from PADI Headquaters, I had officially completed all requirements to become a PADI Instructor!
I cannot thank PADI enough for sponsoring me to undertake further training at a professional level with them, and for being such a big supporter of the Rolex Scholarship. I’d sincerely like to thank Danny Dwyer and Thomas Knedlik from PADI Asia Pacific for helping facilitate this opportunity for me. Also a big thank you to Mark and Damian, as well as Southern Tasmanian Divers for facilitating and being so flexible for my IE.
A HUGE thank you to Tricky and the wonderful team at Dive Centre Manly for hosting me for my PADI IDC, and for a wonderful week of training and diving.
A huge thank you to the wonderful Australasian VP Jayne and her husband Colin for having me in their home while I undertook my training. Next, I’m off to the US to undertake an STO course with Gates Underwater Products and a Davinci for Divers course with Australian Peter Lighthowler!
As always, a big thank you to those who continually support my scholarship year: OWUSS, Rolex, TUSA, Waterproof International, DAN, PADI, Mako Eyewear, Reef Photo & Video and Nauticam.
