Karma

Well I failed abysmally at keeping up to date on this blog didn't I?! Well there's a good reason for that; I was utterly miserable, and no one wants to hear someone droning on about how shit their life is.

Now before I continue, I want to make it very clear that my take on this has changed, but, if you had asked me two months ago whether I would go back to that ship, I would have told you emphatically NO, I hated it. I continued to write a daily log up to the 26th of Feb, but for the most part it had ceased to be about what I had done, and had instead turned into a diatribe of anger and resentment against certain people on board, which would have been deeply unprofessional to post up, despite being deeply cathartic. Since those dark days though, things improved greatly, people joined and people left and by the end of my trip I was being given responsibilities that, while technically shouldn't have been mine, made me confident that I had proved myself to be a competent and useful person to have on board and would be welcomed back, whereas the people who had managed to make my life such a misery had been deemed lazy and useless, with less than a snowballs chance in hell of ever getting back. Karma, you gotta love it.

My problem boiled down to this: I am not a girly girl, I tend to be sarcastic and blunt, I swear more than my mother would like and I like a good dirty joke, I work hard and expect others around me to do the same, and while I am always willing to help a shipmate out, I will not do someone else's work for them. I like a few drinks, (generally this was curbed to Friday nights, with the glory of a study day on the Saturday). In other words, I am a sailor through and through. My fellow cadet was pretty much the opposite, she detested sarcasm, didn't drink much (unless she got so drunk she had to be escorted to a bunk with someone to watch over her in case she was sick), was lazy, and flirted with all the men she could find. They, of course, loved her. She was cute, gazed up at them with big eyes and played the helpless maiden to their worldly wise manliness. We tried to get on, but eventually it became difficult to disguise the mutual contempt in which we held each other. She however had gotten herself a boyfriend on the bridge, so guess who got portrayed as the big mean bossy cow, and who was the poor little flower who could do no wrong. I could go on and list specifics but that would be unfair, and I have every confidence that when it comes to the Orals, she will come unstuck.

What I have leant on this trip is that while popularity makes you happy in the short term, working hard, keeping your head down and smiling even when you want to cry will bring you much greater rewards in the end. I would love to return the ship, as a cadet and then as an officer, and will drink a toast to those who made me miserable, as without them, I couldn't have done it!