Life After the PADI IDC: What New Instructors Can Expect at Oceans 5 Gili Air
Life After the PADI IDC
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| Life After the PADI IDC: What New Instructors Can Expect at Oceans 5 Gili Air |
Becoming a PADI Instructor is an incredible milestone — the culmination of months (sometimes years) of learning, diving, assisting, and developing your skills as a leader underwater. For those who complete their Instructor Development Course (IDC) at Oceans 5 Gili Air, this milestone is only the beginning. The real journey starts the moment you finish the PADI Instructor Examination (IE) and proudly hold that teaching status in your hands.
Oceans 5 Gili Air doesn’t just prepare you for the IE. They prepare you for life as a dive professional. And, just as importantly, they offer support for new instructors who are ready to take their first steps into the teaching world but may feel hesitant or nervous about teaching independently.
This article explores what you, as a freshly certified instructor, can expect after completing your IDC at Oceans 5 Gili Air — from further training opportunities to hands-on experience with real students.
A Smooth Transition from Candidate to Instructor
The first days after passing the IE are both exciting and intimidating. Many new instructors feel a wave of relief when they receive the official “Congratulations!” from the examiners. But then comes the inevitable question: What now?
Oceans 5 Gili Air recognizes that this transition is one of the most critical phases in an instructor’s career. They don’t simply shake your hand, congratulate you, and send you off. Instead, they invite you to continue your development through a carefully designed Instructor Internship Program that allows you to put your knowledge into practice in a safe, supportive environment.
The Free Instructor Internship
Oceans 5 offers every IDC graduate the chance to join a free instructor internship under the direct supervision of one of their experienced instructors. This is a structured, unpaid program with a clear purpose: to help you gain confidence, learn how to schedule and run real PADI courses, and get comfortable dealing with actual students — all while sticking strictly to PADI standards.
During the internship, you will:
Team Teach with Experienced Instructors: You won’t be thrown in the deep end right away. Instead, you’ll team teach alongside Oceans 5’s senior instructors, who will guide you step by step through the process of conducting courses.
Learn Course Scheduling: Planning a course that meets performance requirements while staying efficient is an art form. You will observe and assist with course scheduling and slowly start taking more responsibility yourself.
Practice Briefings and Debriefings: IDC candidates are already used to giving briefings during training, but doing it with paying customers is a whole new experience. You’ll refine your skills under supervision and get valuable feedback.
Deal with Real Students and Real Problems: From nervous Open Water students to excited Advanced divers, you will gain exposure to real-world scenarios and learn how to handle them professionally and calmly.
The goal of this internship is not just to make you passable as an instructor — it’s to make you confident, competent, and comfortable leading students on your own.
Instructor Specialties: Take Your Training Further
Another important step after becoming an Open Water Scuba Instructor (OWSI) is to expand your teaching repertoire by earning Instructor Specialty ratings. The more specialties you can teach, the more valuable you become to a dive center — and the more variety you can offer your future students.
Oceans 5 Gili Air offers a range of instructor specialty courses immediately after every IDC. The courses are led by their Course Director Waz.
Here are some of the most popular specialties new instructors choose:
Enriched Air (Nitrox) Instructor – One of the most in-demand specialties worldwide. Being able to teach Nitrox is almost a must if you want to work in busy dive destinations.
Deep Diver Instructor – Allows you to teach dives up to 40 meters, expanding the range of experiences you can offer students.
Drift Diver Instructor – Perfect for locations like the Gili Islands where currents are part of the adventure.
Peak Performance Buoyancy Instructor – Helps you teach students to fine-tune their buoyancy, one of the most rewarding specialties for both student and instructor.
Search & Recovery, Night Diver, Fish ID – Fun and practical specialties that give you additional tools to engage divers.
Sidemount Instructor – For those who want to teach a different configuration style and appeal to divers interested in redundancy and comfort.
Completing these specialties during your internship phase is ideal because you’re still in “learning mode” after the IDC, and you can immediately apply what you’ve learned by team teaching these courses with experienced staff.
Learning from Oceans 5’s Experienced Team
Oceans 5 is home to six full-time instructors with legal working permits, each with years of teaching experience. This is a huge advantage for new instructors: you have a variety of mentors to learn from, each with their own style of teaching, debriefing, and problem-solving.
This exposure allows you to see multiple approaches to common teaching challenges, helping you refine your own personal teaching style. You might notice how one instructor simplifies theory for students who struggle, or how another keeps a group calm when conditions change unexpectedly.
These insights are invaluable and go far beyond what you learned in the IDC. The internship becomes a living classroom, where every day brings new teaching moments.
Building Confidence Step by Step
The internship is progressive. At first, you may simply shadow an instructor, taking notes and observing how they run the course. Then you’ll be asked to deliver short sections — perhaps a confined water skill circuit or a classroom knowledge review.
As you become more confident, you’ll take over full segments of the course, eventually running entire training days under supervision. This gradual handover means that by the end of the internship, you can comfortably run a full Open Water Course on your own, with the Oceans 5 team nearby if you need support.
Exposure to All Levels of Training
One of the great advantages of doing your internship at Oceans 5 is the variety of training happening at the dive center. Because Oceans 5 is a PADI Career Development Centre, you won’t just see entry-level courses — you’ll also see:
Advanced Open Water Courses
Rescue Diver Courses
Divemaster Internships
IDCs and Specialty Training
This broad exposure gives you a bigger picture of the PADI system and helps you understand how each level of training builds upon the last. You might even find yourself inspired to take your own education further by becoming a Master Scuba Diver Trainer (MSDT) or even an IDC Staff Instructor later on.
Learning to Uphold Standards in the Real World
During the IDC, you spend hours studying the Instructor Manual and learning the importance of adhering to PADI standards. The internship is where you apply that knowledge under real-world pressure.
Oceans 5 places a strong emphasis on sticking to standards — not cutting corners. This is important not just for safety and professionalism, but also because it sets a tone for your career. When you learn to teach by the book from the start, it becomes your default approach, no matter where in the world you teach later.
A Supportive “Family” Atmosphere
Perhaps the most unique aspect of this post-IDC experience is the family-like atmosphere at Oceans 5. The team sees every IDC graduate as part of the Oceans 5 family and takes pride in helping new instructors take their first steps.
You won’t be left alone to figure things out. You’ll have instructors checking in with you, answering your questions, and giving feedback. Many graduates describe this period as one of the most rewarding parts of their professional journey because they feel supported and encouraged, not judged.
Preparing for Your Diving Career
By the end of your time as an instructor intern, you will:
Have hands-on experience teaching real students.
Be comfortable scheduling, briefing, and debriefing courses.
Understand how to handle difficult situations professionally.
Have earned several instructor specialties that make you more employable.
Be confident and ready to work independently anywhere in the world.
Many Oceans 5 graduates find work soon after completing the internship — sometimes even within the Gili Islands network. The combination of quality training, supervised experience, and instructor specialties makes them highly attractive candidates for dive centers.
Conclusion
Becoming a PADI Instructor is an amazing achievement — but it’s what you do next that truly defines your future as a dive professional. Oceans 5 Gili Air’s combination of post-IDC mentorship, instructor specialties, and real-world teaching experience ensures that you don’t just leave with a certification card — you leave with confidence, skills, and a clear understanding of what it takes to be a great instructor.
For any IDC graduate who wants more than just a certificate, Oceans 5 offers the perfect stepping stone from “newborn instructor” to seasoned professional.
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