almosting

Final exams ended yesterday, and the Alumni Ball—a remarkably fancy dinner (we’re in the middle of the ocean!) for which students dressed formally, for the most part—was last night, in two seatings.  The faculty will be hard at work today computing final grades, and there are a series of programs designed to ease re-entry.  Tomorrow is Convocation and our final pre-port briefing.  Somehow packing and the computing of Customs declarations must happen too. 

The most remarkable thing about last night, I thought, was that somewhat heavy seas—maybe a bit heavier this morning, or maybe I was just up too late—seemed to trouble no one.  Not the waiters carrying full trays of soup—the crew in general get the biggest applause here, and surely deserve it—but not the rest of us either.  We lurched from side to side as we walked or sat, and we hardly noticed it at all.  The phrase “sea legs” isn’t sufficient to describe it. 

Jenna Lawrence from Columbia, who’s been teaching Marine Biology classes on the ship, had wanted all voyage to see an albatross but didn’t see one until yesterday, when Paul Muldoon, a poet who’s our most illustrious faculty member, came all the way from the stern to the bow to find her, in spite of his being up against a deadline.  And there it was, larger and more magnificent than one could have imagined, like everything at sea.