Day 2

So, day two kicked off with an inspirational lecture of "A Career At Sea" by Barry Sadler.  He is a Southampton unrestricted pilot, meaning he can pilot any sized ship into Southampton - this is a serious position of responsibility as they literally back enormous ships into there.  He went to sea in 1985 and then became a pilot after many years sea service.  He painted what he described as an honest picture of what working at sea was like.  This was an upbeat and positive hour where we learned of the best and the worst of sea life from his perspective.  He worked as a Deck Officer so not 100% accurate of an Engineer's job, but still helpful to gain perspective.  The one thing he said which really stuck with me is that what we are doing now is learning to be Engineering Officers; learning to do the actual job, not learning to get a certificate.  Another theme from today is that as much as hardwork is important, relaxing is important too. 

Following this inspirational talk, we had the Maths Test/"Assessment".  This was, rather surprisingly, not like the maths paper I had expected, but a multiple choice paper.  Most questions were a case of four possible answers with three being correct and one being false.  We had to identify the false in each case.  This really meant you had to work them all out to check and be safe.  I found the test ok, but I only just finished in the last minute.  Slow manual speed I guess, but I was being very thorough with checking as it's easy to be tricked with the answers.  Not sure when we find out the results on that.  Hopefully on Thursday.  The results will determine who needs extra 'Maths Clinic' every week. 

 Other bits included a lecture from our course tutor on what the course actually covered and what we would need to do in the long run to work up to chief engineer.  One of the key things we learned was that due to the course being a degree course, it would give us full MCA exemptions for 2nd Engineer and Chief tickets later.  This basically means that we don't need to come back to do very long periods of study to go up to the next levels once we are ready.  It saves time and money.  We also had brief library and IT inductions that afternoon.  Oh, and we got given timetables for group one and group two, but we don't know until Thursday what group we are in, so not a huge amount of use.  What we do know is that we have two full days a week of workshop practical training.  I relish the thought of that.

We had some spare time in the afternoon so Chris and I managed to take time out to go for a run off campus.  We headed north up the river and the scenery running up there is great.  There are boats absolutely everywhere, and it wasn't long before we reached a marina with even more boats layed up for winter.  It was good to be outside and away from the campus, as although it's good as they go, it's also very small, so running free for a while felt great.  The evening was enjoyable, with a great risotto I had for dinner followed by a seriously long pub quiz in the bar.  It must have taken about two hours and included 8 rounds!  Luckily I drank slow...I don't think everyone did.