I have a quick bit of good news to report. Both Andrea and I have achieved the rank of Master Scuba Diver Trainer (MSDT)! This is pretty exciting for us. The basic rank of a scuba instructor is an Open Water Scuba Instructor, and we have held this rank since getting certified as instuctors almost a year ago. But we have now moved up to the next level, MSDT.
In order to do this we first needed meet certain student certification requirements, to show that we are experienced instructors. The harder part, though, was that we each needed to achieve the ranking of Specialty Instructor in at least five different diving specialties. These are specialties that students can take to make them more proficient in certain aspects of diving, such as wreck diving, night diving or deep diving. Andrea and I have each achieved the Specialty Instructor status in eight different specialties!
As MSDTs, we can now certify divers as Master Scuba Divers, which is the highest non-professional ranking a scuba diver can achieve. It is a fun goal for a diver to work towards, and it shows that the diver has mastery in a number of areas, as well as a good deal of dive experience and rescue diver skills. Andrea and I had both earned our Master Scuba Diver certifications before we started our professional training, and so it is exciting that we can now train divers up to that level as well!
So things continue to be good on the diving front. We are both enjoying working as scuba instructors, and we are enjoying the fact that we continue to learn and improve our own diving skills and credentials!
GO TEAM SCHMOOP!!!