This internship is coming to a close for me. I have been doing the MATE/UNOLS thing since February 10th when I first flew to Cape Town to get on the KNORR. It has been a singularly unique experience in my life thus far. I have seen things and done things I never thought imaginable. I have met people I never would have, had I not taken that giant step and applied. I have been places that none of my friends have been, and some places none of them will ever get to go. For god’s sake I got a tour of the inside of the new ALVIN submersible twice. I found out that people value my input on technical problems, and that my solutions sometimes are rather unique.
This internship is not a walk in the park; it is not easy by any stretch of the imagination. I have been physically removed from my family and friends for nearly a year. Granted this is cake walk compared to the isolation friends of mine in the military have endured, but I am not that courageous. I am generally a socially gregarious person in that I always have friends around unless I am embroiled in studying prior to an exam. I used to do my homework in a bar. So you can just imagine how not used to being alone I am. Right now I feel very alone, most the time during the internship, you have people you are friendly with, but it takes a long time to develop those friendships where you can just spill your guts about how you are feeling. You don’t always have that outlet. Have a friend back home prepared for the email rants that will likely ensue as you shift your whole world view. You are settling into a new lifestyle. Being a marine technician is much more than just a job, it is fundamentally a lifestyle, and it’s one of those things you are either ready for or you aren’t. Don’t feel bad either way.
You will begin to make friends with people who share in your new life, these people are indispensable at helping you navigate this whole new world that isn’t quite as easy to understand as you might think. Just the vocabulary you need to learn to become competent is quite different than the vernacular you would generally use in most work places. Not many jobs have their own words for left and right, front and back, but sailing does, and learning these words early will help you in ways you won’t quite understand till you are yelling at someone to grab the line on the port rail and they just stand there and stare at you.
You can’t be ready for everything though. Invariably something that no one thought that could happen will happen, and it is in these stressful tension filled times you can really help out. You can go back in the blog and read my entry about machining a bearing press when we were unable to easily pull the bearing from a seatel mount hiseasnet antenna.
So there is totally no way to predict with any certainty what you will be facing as the ship pulls away from the pier and science begins. All we can do is prepare ourselves in a general sense by understanding how systems function. Most things work as part of systems, so getting comfortable with seeing a piece of equipment in its constituent parts is a must. I just spent the last couple weeks tearing apart and fixing, successfully a camera pedestal for a TV studio quality camera. At first you might think, meh it’s a tripod, which essentially it is. But it also costs nearly $20,000, which is more than my car cost brand new. I had to rip this entire thing apart to change out three orings in the very middle, and we weren’t even positive that was where the problem really was. So I took it apart, found all the orings then had to wait for a week to get them, then put this giant monstrosity back together and this morning filled it with nitrogen. It is holding well.
So also be prepared to work on things whose price will terrify you. Be comfortable with getting elbow deep in things you have never seen before or taken apart. Trust in your ability to take things apart and find the faulty section. Have at least one friend who you are willing to become extremely closes with and share those times when you are terrified and feeling alone in the middle of the ocean. It can be a scary place. The loneliness at times can become all encompassing. The rewards for a job well done are the scientist may never have interrupted service time; their science can be conducted without worry that something may break and may not be fixed. They trust in you to know your stuff in a very general way, and across many fields of discipline.