Back in October 2019, I decided to hold my first AMA (Ask Me Anything) on r/IAmA and r/scuba, as I felt the work experience as a 19-years-old SCUBA diving guide I just came from could be quite unique and curious.
What I found generally was a quite widespread – yet totally unblameable – feeling of suspiciousness regarding my qualifications based on my experience: from a general sense of distrust towards a diving guide of my age and experience, to the “titular” a user in a particularly grumpy mood commented about my patent.
A pretty significant share of the suspicion I witnessed was also due to the naming of the titles: while the DiveMaster patent is indeed the highest non-instructor patent in the PADI roadmap, its name seemed to convey a much more prestigious meaning, strictly tied to having a truly extreme mastery of the diving technique.
While I value my diving experience by its relationship with my young age too, I do recognise that it’s very limited in an absolute sense, and find both concerns to be perfectly valid – I thoroughly addressed all these concepts in my comments on the original post:
IAmA 19-years-old DiveMaster who’s just worked for a month in a Diving Centre: AMA!
Hello! My name is Giorgio Ciacchella, I’m Italian and as the title says, I’ve just worked for 5 weeks in a Diving Centre in Corsica, France thanks to the Level Three CEDIP patent I passed last summer, which is roughly equivalent to the perhaps more popular PADI DiveMaster.
My father has always been extremely fond of SCUBA diving, having started at just age 20 with his father. I simply couldn’t help but pick up the passion unconsciously: at merely 3 years of age, upon being stumbled by a wave and coming out of it unharmed I said, relieved: “Luckily I’m a SCUBA diver”.
I myself have started actual SCUBA diving when I was just 8, with one of those trial dives in a swimming pool, and despite having cancelled the first dive for feeling uneasy I tried again and immediately fell in love with it. Over the next summer I continued practising diving in the sea with my experienced father as a buddy and a guide, and at age 10 I got my first (Junior) Open Water Diver patent.
Since then, I’ve basically undergone one new course each summer along with relevant practise on actual sea dives, up to this summer, when we managed to organise this month-long work period in this Diving Centre we know the owner of.
If you still have any questions, comment the Reddit post or contact me through the icons at the bottom of the page: I’ll be glad to address any doubt or curiosity!