Two years ago, Simon completed his Divemaster course with Two Fish Divers Bunaken. This year, he returned to take the next step and become a PADI instructor. After his course, he decided to stay on for a couple of weeks and complete an instructor internship. Here’s how it went….
Wow! How quickly time flies by! It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was arriving in Bunaken to start my Instructor Development Course (IDC) and yet here I am, near the end of my time on this beautiful island, as a new PADI instructor!
I chose to come to do the IDC here as this is where I had done my Divemaster course and I fell in love with the place and the staff here. I also really like the way that Two Fish deliberately keep the numbers of either Divemaster candidates or Instructor candidates doing a course at one time down. That way you are guaranteed to get a lot of personalised assistance and instruction from the very experienced instructors, which for me has been most welcome and appreciated.
After completing the PADI Instructor Exam and another three days of training to teach Speciality courses it was back to Bunaken for me and fellow new instructor Roya to start our Instructor internship. Due to time restriction, my internship is a fairly short 10 days but it has been so helpful to work with Dion on an Open Water Course and to be able to certify my first student. (I was also very lucky that my first student took to diving like a duck to water!). Seeing how Dion was able to organise things to enable the course to be done within the student’s timescale was so helpful and his years of experience really show.
I also got to “help” on a Rescue Diver Course by surprising the poor student by posing as the victim’s frantic husband as he tried to get her out of the water!! It’s fair to say I gave him a bit of a shock!!!!! I hope to be able to help out on a student’s SMB Specialty before I leave, which should be good (and lets face it, we all need a little practice with the ol’ SMB now and again!)
I will be sad to leave here but will be forever grateful for all the help and support I received. Everything was run like clockwork and was so much fun!!! I can’t recommend it highly enough. The MSDT speciality course and internship is also to be recommended and will further a new instructor’s career and opportunities as well as giving us newbies that extra bit of confidence that will make all the difference!
I will miss all the lovely people here too! Thank you to Course Director Marie, and newly graduated Staff Instructors Dani and Bryce as well as my fellow candidates! You were brilliant!