Scuba Center Amsterdam

This is going very nicely! When I landed in Amsterdam with my new PADI certification in hand, I didn't just sit back and stare at it in wonder. I managed to hit the ground running (or at least, rolling quickly enough as to keep some speed up.)

So Monday I wrote my "diving CV". A chopped up version of my normal resume, the heading "Diving Experience" takes precidence over my education and my past jobs. And the last 7 jobs have been grouped into a heading called "engineening career".

I don't actually have a lot of diving experience. Or very high credentials. So personal sales will be the thing here.

That's why Tuesday I emailed my new CV to my nearest PADI dive shop and then last night dropped in there to meet and talk. I arrived at 6:40. The shop closes at 7pm. We talked until 8:30 or so. Very cool!

Laszlo, the owner, seemed almost negative because he doesn't have need for any more instructors until (get this) July. LOL! July sounds like "right away" to me.

But even better, Laszlo deals a lot of independant instructors who use his shop resources to teach students they find themselves. And this is something I was looking for. He has price lists all drawn up, showing pool times, equipment rental prices, prices for books and DVDs and PADI paperwork and applications.

So if I want to take a friend diving in the pool some Wednesday or Friday night, all I have to do is call the shop that afternoon. If I want to teach people an entire course, I can plan pool sessions weeks in advance. And when someone needs a book to study from, they're sitting in the shop. No ordering over a website required!

So perhaps I can start right away?!? I just need my first victim to sign up and we can do a private class between now and the end of June. Then hopefully, if I can certify an average of four divers a month for 6 months, I'll be a speciality instructor by the end of the year.

My classmates from the Bonaire course will have their first 25 certified students in no time flat. I'll have to work all year and perhaps longer. But 25 is significant as this is the number required to "self-certify" in certain specialities. For example, deep diving, night diving, navigation, dry suit diving and perhaps one or two others are specialities I can already qualify for... save for the lack of 25 certifications. Once I have 5 such specialities I can move past speciality instructor and reach master scuba diver instructor (MSDT). This is the median point.

Just about every instructor out there is an MSDT. It's an easy level to reach. It doesn't pay any better than a humble OWSI, but it makes it easier to get the preferred job. They can teach more and thus are more marketable.

So that's the next step. Get as many students certified as possible.

And now that I've been to Scuba Center, I'm thinking this isn't such an impossible dream.