Finding a Family

8 months…17 countries…over 41,000 nautical miles...123 days at sea…100 days on land --- that is how much time about 24 of us on the TSS staff spent with each other living together, working together, traveling together, building together, creating together, making mistakes together and succeeding together. Whoa – that’s an intense work and living environment! It could easily be a recipe for implosion and disaster. I was very lucky though to work with an outstanding group of people on this crazy endeavor of creating a university on a ship. They were all passionate, professional and committed. We all worked crazy, insane hours in a very unique environment. It was definitely not always hearts and flowers between everyone but we always worked through the bumps – keeping our eyes on the mission and goals of what we were trying to create -- and in the end it seems absolutely amazing to think about what we, as a team, accomplished this past year.

It is awesome what we accomplished this past year and I am proud of that but there is another aspect of our lives together that I find myself appreciating today. This crazy, intense, isolated work and living environment created a very unique closeness and familiarity that developed over our months together. We knew each other habits, patterns, schedules, moods, likes, dislikes, pet peeves, hot buttons, and what things made each other smile.

This fact really struck me hard during our last couple of days on the ship. At every meal, during every event, throughout every interaction I realized just how intimate and comfortable we had become with one another. We could get each other what we needed during a meal without evening asking, we would share food off each other’s plates, conversation would flow freely or we could sit comfortably in silence. The comfortableness and familiarity that we developed went far beyond that of a normal work family. Because we not only worked together but lived together, ate together, played together, cried together and shared together in such an isolated environment we truly became like a family.

I think that is what made me so sad to leave on that last day. I recognized, again, what a unique environment that I was living in – an environment that would never be exactly the same ever again and never could it be recreated. How bitter sweet. I feel very lucky and honored to have been a part of that environment – to have developed such a strong closeness and intimacy with such an amazing group of people. I knew that being a part of the TSS inaugural staff would have a lot of highs and lows, a lot of uncertainties, a lot of opportunities and that the entire experience would be unique and intense. What I didn’t know, and was surprised and pleased to discover, is that I would find a family in the process. How great is that?