Oh Well. The Damage is Done Now.

I may have become an instructor for the wrong reasons.

No, it wasn't because some agency managed to convince me that if I was an instructor that would make me the coolest diver in the sea.

I was lucky; when I got to a bit of a cross-roads as to whether I could start working on my Divemaster I had a mentor explain, "If you want to be a good diver you dive more. If you want to participate in classes you DM." I dove more.

After a few years I started looking around me and seeing just how much better, smarter, and safer divers could be with proper training. I started hearing things "my instructor told me" that were just dead wrong. And I started thinking, "I can do better than that."

So I became a recreational instructor. But I was never going to be a technical instructor.

And I looked around me and saw some of the ridiculous gear configurations and the people who couldn't hold a deco stop in blue water and the complete misunderstandings of decompression theory... but, "My instructor showed me this is how. And you're not an instructor anyway."

So the same thing happened. But I was never going to be a cave instructor.

And there were the times where no one seemed to do any predive checks or come back with 500psi in a tank or change buddy teams mid-dive or say, "Huh?" when you suggested gas matching... but, "My instructor showed me this is how. And you're not an instructor anyway."

So the same thing happened. (Currently I am never going to be an instructor trainer.)

Whether any instructor had actually showed them terrible ways of doing things or not is irrelevant. That divers thought they had is what mattered.

So I worry that I became an instructor simply because I wanted to be a pushy asshole who tells everyone the right way to dive and to unfuck poor dive practices.

I suppose it's just dumb luck that I genuinely enjoy the process of teaching and watching as people successfully work through challenges, too.