Diary of an IDC Candidate
By Mehmet Hurer
April 2006
After the excitement of winning the IDC sponsorship competition from the London Diving Chamber in March, I managed to calm myself down and read the small print. Here, I discovered that I had a very generous timescale of one year to complete the Instructor Development Course - plenty of time to prepare myself at a nice steady pace. Alex, my PADI Course Director at Rec-n-Tec, had different ideas. He said, “I’ve got an IDC in a few weeks [May] and you’re on it. You’ll be ready – don’t worry!”
Two weeks before the IDC
After receiving the IDC Crewpak, I started to work through the Candidate Workbook, revised some dive theory and re-read my Divemaster manual and Encyclopaedia. I started to feel confident with the academic side of things. I also went to the pool on the Wednesday evening to practise a skill circuit.
A week before the IDC
The following week, I was back in the pool for a skill circuit assessment and stamina tests. I met the other four IDC candidates: Debbie, Pete, Simon and Adam. It was obvious that everyone was really passionate about diving and looking forward to the IDC. We all passed the skills circuit and stamina tests - a real confidence boost!
IDC Week - Saturday
The IDC started gently at 11am in the morning. We were given our assignments for the week: Knowledge Development Presentations for the classroom, Confined Water Presentations for the pool and Open Water Presentations for Gildenburgh. All of these would be marked and form part of the IDC assessment. We were also told we would need to tie knots. I popped to my local DIY store to buy some rope to practise with – I could barely tie my shoelaces let alone knots!
During the first few days, we had some theory exams, some lectures and gave our Knowledge Development Presentations to the group. Initially, the thought of presenting knowledge topics to the Rec-n-Tec team was a little daunting, given that the audience knew more about the topics than we did. However, by our final presentations most of the nerves had disappeared and we were all feeling happy.
Wednesday
By Wednesday, we were looking forward to jumping in the pool to perform our Confined Water Presentations. We were told to look for deliberate mistakes as our ‘students’ performed the skills. My presentation was Mask Removal and Replacement. Unfortunately, I was at the other end of the pool when Ian decided to throw his mask away and I couldn’t retrieve it immediately, even with my Olympic paced swim. Zero points for me. Thankfully, we all learnt from our mistakes and by our final presentations we were all scoring high marks. By this stage, the camaraderie between instructors and candidates was great.
Friday
On Friday, we travelled to Gildenburgh to perform our Open Water Presentations. My ‘students’ were required to tie a bowline knot. Pete went first and tied every knot except the bowline – oh dear! After we had finished our Open Water Presentations, we completed a PADI General Standards and Procedures exam, had final counselling sessions with Alex and filled in our paperwork.
