Why Do You DM?

The Divemaster giving the breifing knows it all!  Their gear is well-worn and faded, their skin is sunkissed and salt-worn, their wetsuit looks to have seen better days, but each of the scuffs and aquasealed holes must be a story of the sea.  They are the envy of the dive world, the tropical dive pro; the archetypal person that everyone wants to either sleep with or to be.  

It's a romantic image, to be certain.  The devil-may-care attitude, living in a tropical paradise, getting to dive glorious reefs so often you know EXACTLY where to find some of the hardest to spot wildlife.  What is there not to envy?  Such people are "living the dream!"

And so, back home, when the LDS suggests you would make a great Divemaster an image flashes through your mind: yourself on the dive deck, wetsuit pulled down to your waist, giving the briefing to a boat full of tourists from far-flung places you'll never want to visit (because there's no diving where they're from).  You imagine living on an island happily going about days of flat, clear, blue water and night hours ringing late with the chimes of cold beer bottles.

"Yeah," you think, "I would be a good Divemaster!"

You respect your instructor, perhaps you have been working with them for some time already.  They know how committed you are to the sport and how capable and safety-minded you are.  This is not even to mention that they've been teaching for years and, after all, they're an instructor!  Of course they know what they're talking about.

Do they, though?  Do they really?

It is hard to intuit that there are some seriously crap instructors, especially when you're a newer diver.  It becomes a classic case of not knowing what you don't know, with the person offering to tell you the things you don't know... when they don't know themselves.

I have known a great many crap instructors and instructor trainers.  Still do know.  By and large they mean well;  they like the sport and believe in dive safety.  Sometimes they even accidentally train a good, lifelong diver.  But, for the most part, they come to the life of a dive professional either as a bit of personal fun or (more commonly) because they were sold the class.

For my purposes here I am going to ignore the destination DMs/Instructors.  The people who ACTUALLY live the dream.  Most of these wind up in the life either accidentally as most people get their jobs, or because they are true misfits who had too little sense to hold down a real job.  The people I'm talking about here are not these, but rather the 99% of people you've ever met at the office Christmas party who say, "Actually, I'm a dive instructor."

I got lucky. Very lucky.  I had finished Recue Diver class and first aid and Cavern Diver.  Like so many newer divers who have been really and solidly bitten by the bug I loved taking classes; I loved learning more.  I wanted to take my diving further and I was trying to decide which way to go next.

"Should I take tech classes or Divemaster?" I asked, Mark, an instructor I had been working with pretty extensively.  He sighed.  On reflection, I know that sigh.  In that sigh he said everything I am trying to work around to writing out here.

"Do your really want to teach?" Was all he came up with.

"I guess so?  Eventually?"

"No, no.  I mean now.  Do you really want to be a dive instructor?"

"Not really.  I mean, im not ready to teach anyone," I admit, I didn't understand what he was asking.  He was trying to press me on whether I get that dive instruction was a vocation?  A holy calling that I couldn't resist or extinguish thoughts of.  He wanted to know whether it hurt my soul that I couldn't teach people how to dive.

"There really isn't any point in becoming a local Divemaster unless you intend to be an instructor.  And you really don't need to be an instructor unless you really want to teach."

I thought about that a long time.  And I enrolled in tech courses.

I was jealous when a good friend got his Divemaster certification.  Not long after he had his instructor.  I was jealous of that, too.  Because some little part of me knew that now he had that imaginary life on the boat available to him.  Now, somehow, he had access to some hidden truths that are obscure to the rest of the diving world; somehow he was a better diver than me.

I know now that my friend Mark saved me from myself, in a way.  He could have easily sold me the shop's DM course.  Ushered me through the coursework to make his numbers look good and to score some free labor for the shop for a while.  The joke is that Divemasters are any given shop's tank monkeys; people who not only work for the shop, but PAY for the privilege of working for the shop.  It isn't a terrible stretch of the imagination to see why this might be a valuable arrangement, not only to the shop, but to the certification agency.

At some point I'll talk about how the largest certification agency is not much more than a publishing company cult anymore; for here you'll simply have to take me at my word.  Which is a bit of a cop out considering it gets quite pointedly to the center of my thesis...

Most people become Divemasters and even instructors simply because that was their next apparent step.  The instructors, the shops, and the agencies are all too happy to accommodate them because they have proven to be a reliable source of revenue. 

When I say my friend Mark saved me, this is what I mean he saved me from.

I didn't understand what I was asking when I first suggested I might become a divemaster.  I didn't know what being a Divemaster really entailed, being responsible for people's lives (people who are often trying to kill themselves... and you), being hyper-aware of your surroundings and your divers in the water at all times, never really calming down and simply enjoying the zen calm of being underwater.

Some years later I looked at the divers around me and realized something heartbreaking.  They're just crap.  Few had the first ideas about buoyancy or trim, many "experienced" divers had no concept of streamlined gear or safe diving.  Far worse: I'd hear instructors repeating falsehoods and myths to their students who didn't know any better than to accept them as gospel, likely to go repeat them to others (who, if they go on as divers are likely to repeat these same myths even as they earn regard as an experienced diver themselves).

"I can do better than that," I thought.  It became a constant, nagging thought, that I could teach better, stronger, safer divers than the baseline.  I simply needed to do it.

It had become a vocation.  And it continues to be, as I have earned higher degrees of teaching credentials; all along the way it had been about making better divers for me.  It was never about the agency or or credentials or the prestige.

Full disclosure: I have to admit, there is a joy in being a working dive professional.  But the drive to do it was never some windswept fantasy for me, I view it as a job.

So why do you DM?  Do you want to help make better divers and keep people safe?  Or do you want people to look at your C-card and think, "Ooo, this person must know so much about diving!"

If it is the latter, I'll let you in on a secret:

The people you're impressing don't know shit.  The people you are seeking to impress -- the resort boat crew -- they have seen your type many thousands of times over... they anticipate you being a giant goddamn nuisance.