waves

The sea has been rolling more steadily and more dramatically during the past 24 hours than it had most of the time before.  I heard reports of seasickness on and off yesterday—students who were waiting on line outside my office, to figure out with me how they can best complete their faculty-directed practica (fdp) requirements, sometimes disappeared, and someone else on line would say to me, a little sheepishly, “I don’t think she was feeling well.”  Outside my dean’s office window just now there is a steady run of thick, heavy-looking waves, darker-looking underneath a cloud-filled sky, domineering in appearance because it is only they from here to the horizon.

 

The rougher motion did not seem to prevent Reading Day from being what it was supposed to be yesterday.   Students read.  Oh, they seemed to catch up on sleep too (we lost another hour to another time change after all), and on email, but all around the ship there were students reading their business or conservation biology textbooks or novels.  These non-class days make for an important interruption of a schedule that might seem for all as relentless as the waves.  We’ll have them now and then.

 

Otherwise, the ship, when at sea, operates on an A/B class schedule, some classes meeting on A days, the rest meeting on B days, so that a student will have a given course every other day while at sea.  (Classes don’t meet while we’re in the ports.)  In working with my colleagues at the Institute for Shipboard Education, one of my main goals—happily achieved—was to make all A/B class days adjacent: that is, A3, which is today, immediately precedes B3, without any time in between.  That ensures that classes for which there are two sections, one on the A day and one on the B day—like, for instance, the Global Studies course, in which Alex Nalbach will give the same lecture in our largest classroom, the Union, at 9:20 this morning and then again at the same time tomorrow—are always at the same point, relative to the itinerary, in both sections: one wouldn’t want one section of a course to be anticipating arrival in Brazil while the same class meeting of the second section of the course came after departure from Brazil.  In this way, for all the different things we’re doing, we’re on the same pace.

 

That is not to claim that the pace is entirely smooth, only that it is as well managed as we can make it. Last night Bob Vieira, our Executive Dean, ran a meeting in the Glazer Lounge for the several dozen passengers who still lack India visas.  Students aren’t generally allowed in the 7^th deck faculty/staff lounge; holding the meeting there was a way of sending a signal about the importance of the problem to those of us on the ship—and it touches Bob quite personally, since he, his wife, and his son are among the passengers lacking those visas.  If you don’t know Bob, let me tell you that he’s a gem—and that the intelligence, sincerity, and poise he brings to these matters, and brought to his handling of the meeting last night are of the kind we all want from leaders at the very highest of levels.  A number of the questions he fielded reflected, unsurprisingly, the anxiety and even the anger of folks in the room: folks want this to be settled now, wanted it to be settled weeks ago, and are frustrated that none of us on the ship can settle it instantly, as we’d like to do. 

 

As Bob said, ISE is pursuing a number of different strategies towards a happy resolution, but none can be associated with certainty unless or until we all have visas in hand.  I can’t say that everyone left the room happy, but that wasn’t one of the options for last night.  I can say that everyone who showed that they wanted to be heard was, and that they got responses from the kind of person that any parent or loved one or even just interested spectator would want to see in charge of such a situation.  I assured parents on board before we left that their children would be in good hands, but I was talking about the faculty.  Of that I still feel sure.  But I’ll say it here too about the Executive Dean.  He can’t have all the answers at this stage, but the students and the rest of us here couldn’t have a better advocate in a tough situation.