Nina Garbarino Senior Project

 Blog Day 12    I had a great last day of my senior project, where I tied up some loose ends in my project and prepared to present tomorrow at express fest. I woke up this morning and replied to some job offer emails and did some multiple-choice practice problems. I then headed to campus to get my signatures filled out and saw Mountain Classroom return! (not included in hours). I then drove all the way to Tilton to do my drug screening for the Coast Guard. Out of everything in my project, this and my physical were the hardest things to get done because of the lack of instruction. The USCG is very picky with the specific type of test I needed and the forms to be filled out with it. I also needed to find a facility that had the ability to work with the Coast Guard. On Thursday morning, I am taking the physical exam needed in Concord so I can have all my requirements finally finished. I’m so excited and proud that I finished this process.  Today’s Hours: 5 Total Hours...

    Blog Day 11      I technically finished my senior project today because I hit the hours requirement! Looking at it now, 75 hours is a lot. I woke up this morning and got right to work doing some review on charting skills that needed to be relearned because I forgot over the weekend. This included courses including current and wind, I couldn’t remember when I had to do conversions and make triangles on the chart. I worked mainly in the Chesapeake Bay chart because it’s the area I’m least familiar with. When the questions tell me about a landmark, it’s hard to find where it is because I don’t know the area. After my morning session, I took a 100-question practice test on the rules of the road to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything there. I printed some documents I needed to fill out and looked for help from fellow mariners on Reddit. I’ve found the r/merchantmarieners community to be very helpful when it comes to quick questions. I have so many random p...

Week 2 Reflection The time is really flying by, I can’t believe graduation is in less than a week. For the second week of senior project, I spent my time getting to the end of my course so I could start studying for my final exam. I spent the beginning of the week finishing up, learning about all the rules I have to know. I am so thankful that it’s over. Learning 38 different rules with sub-sections was so hard and I’m so proud of myself for being able to navigate and understand them. To keep these rules fresh in my mind, I have practice tests that I’m trying to take every day so I don’t forget everything. I think that the hardest part of this section was learning about all the different lights upon vessels. There are just so many possibilities of what something could be in the dark because of length and other variables. There’s only so much I can memorize, so the rest of it was intuition based. In the middle of the week, I started the navigation portion of my course, which was suppose...

  Blog Day 10        I almost hit all my hours today! I decided to sleep in because I knew I had the time to do my work this afternoon. I started at noon and worked for four hours straight doing practice navigation problems. I got really frustrated at the end of my time block because I got a handful of questions wrong that I shouldn’t have. I’m starting to be too confident and make careless mistakes. For the next couple of days, I need to slow down and double-check all my work. I’m excited to spend the weekend studying and preparing for the express fest.  Today’s Hours: 4 Total Hours: 71.5

 Blog Day 9 I had a great day! I spent the entire morning finishing up my plotting module. I learned things like how to account for drift and current and dead reckonings. This was so annoying to learn but I put my airpods in and got it done. In the afternoon I did a lot of practice. I did multiple full questions with charting voyages in Block Island Sound, Long Island Sound and the entrance of the Chesapeake Bay. This wrapped up all of my course and I’m spending the next couple of days preparing for my final exam. Todays Hours: 7 Total Hours: 67.6

  Blog Day 8 Hey, blog. I had another successful day! Like I said in yesterday’s entry, I am starting the final portion of my course… hands-on navigation! I started my day by getting all my materials situated and my charts rolled out to be worked on. I first took a pretest to see how much I already knew. I did better than I expected on this and was excited about how much I already knew. Thank you, Mom and Ocean! After the pretest, I began the new material that I had to learn. Some of the things that I went over today as review and new material are: plotting latitude and longitude when given a location, plotting location when given latitude and longitude, speed/distance/time conversions, plotting a course to steer, speed made good, TVMDC conversions and many other useful tools. I spent my whole day going through each of these skills, making sure I had mastered them even if I had already learned them prior. Finally, I took some module quizzes so I could see how well I was actually ...

Blog Day 7      Good morning, day I don’t know! This morning I woke up early, picked up Dunkin, and headed to campus to have breakfast with my favorite freshman. Although this was not included in my hours, I thought it would be cute to include. I helped Evie study for her math test a little bit before she headed off to classes. After that, I hunkered down at my desk in the dorm and got to work. Today was a really big day because it was my last day before I started plotting navigation. I finished up the modules on the Code of Federal Regulations, Electronic Navigation, Safety, and Survival and passed all their tests easily. Doing those took most of the morning and some time into the afternoon. After a short lunch break consisting of hearing Kally play piano in the chapel, I took my final tests on Rules of the Road, praying that I passed. I did! These were no ordinary tests because, similar to my final cumulative exam at the end of the course, I needed a 90% to pass the sec...

   Blog Day 6           Happy Monday, everyone… four more days till Friday! I woke up super early this morning so I could get most of my work out in the morning. This morning I finished the aids to navigation module, which was based on learning about all the navigational tools on and off the water. My favorite thing that I learned this morning was that there are two different regions where navigational markers are different. These regions are determined by the International Association of Lighthouse Authorities (IALA). We are in Region B, along with South America, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines. The rest of the world is Region A. Although this was cool, it also made me a little mad because why can’t the world just keep everything the same. I have the same thoughts about International versus Inland rules. I don’t understand why it all can’t just be all together.      In the afternoon, I went over general seamanship, which was real...

Now that the first week of senior project is over, I have a lot of reflection thoughts. I was so excited for this project to be the only thing on my mind during this time but I’m also struggling with the hard thoughts of leaving Proctor in a couple of weeks. Suddenly I wished that I had more math classes, more time with my friends, more dining hall meals, and more weekends in the dorm. I guess that’s the funny thing, though, right? We don’t really appreciate the things we love until they’re gone. Proctor never prepared me for that.  Beyond my personal problems of not wanting to grow up, I’m very impressed with my work so far. I’ve got a really good routine down and I’m happy to be still doing my favorite thing, learning. But, in that learning, I find myself struggling with the same problem I’ve had my whole life. Overworking. I’m known for drilling myself into holes of determination to finish and reach the goals that I want. During the school year, I tend to lock myself away withou...

Blog Day 5      Today was a really good day! I woke up early today and did a large chunk of work in the morning. I learned more about lights upon vessels that have restricted the ability to maneuver and pilot vessels. Learning about lights is getting so repetitive. Thankfully, I probably only have one more day of rules of the road. After doing some review of the NATO phonetic alphabet, I took a lunch break. After lunch, I started learning about the different types of whistles, bells, and horns. This was a little less boring because it was new material. Overall a really productive day, I plan on doing some work tomorrow to catch up on my hours and keep my brain fresh. Today’s Hours: 6.5 Total Hours: 33.5

Blog Day 4      I did so much work today that my brain might be more fried than when I’m in regular school. I’m really happy with my progress and hard work. In the morning, I continued learning about the rules of the road, which was starting to become so annoying. I’m sick of learning stuff that I just have to memorize. I learned more about lights upon fishing vessels, sailing vessels, and power-driven vessels. For these, I have to make flashcards based on my notes in order to memorize them. To wrap this all up, I learned about the visibility of these said vessels. The biggest lesson that I learned taught me that “the larger the vessel, the greater the range of visibility of the lights being shown.” As the vessel gets over 50 meters in length, the lights can be seen up to 6 nautical miles away. This lesson also included lights on submarines which I didn’t realize I’d be learning in this course but it was still cool. Afterward, I learned about lights in towing and pushing ...

   Blog Day 3      Halfway through the week, let’s go! Today I reviewed all that I have previously learned. I knew that I wouldn’t have enough time to finish the whole course during the senior project, so I started a month early so I could finish on time. I studied everything that I had already gone over to make sure I had really got it down. This included re-learning the NATO phonetic alphabet because I had completely forgotten it. I had to re-learn the Morse codes because I also didn’t remember that. Somehow doing that took the entire morning because I just couldn’t get it down. Finally, at around 11am, I had it under my grasp so I could finally move on. After a quick lunch break, I started reviewing Navigation Equipment and VHF Communication in case of an emergency. I retained this information pretty well from when I first learned it, so I was feeling pretty good. Overall a really good day, and I'm looking forward to starting new material tomorrow. Today's Ho...

  Blog Day 2      For the second day of senior project, I stepped away from my online class and started filling in the other requirements for a Merchant Mariner License. In the morning, I got some regular coursework done and then headed down to Concord for the afternoon. I took a 6-hour-long First Aid/CPR/AED Course for adults, children, and babies. It was so long and so tiring but I’m happy it’s over with. I did First Aid in the morning, where I learned all about wounds, pressure, and tourniquets. In the afternoon, I re-instated my CPR and AED certification, where I learned first how to do the response on adults and then on kids and babies. At the end of the class, I took the final exam, which I passed with flying colors. I even got to take some things home in case I ever ran into an emergency. Overall, it was a really good experience and I’m happy I got it over with in the beginning. Today's Hours: 8 Total Hours: 14

Blog Day 1          Wow, I can’t believe that it’s the first day of senior project! Honestly thought this day would never come, but it snuck up so fast! I had an early morning of hard work where I started my course. I began by learning about all the different types of charts and publications in the nautical world. A lot of this is review for me but it’s still nice to have learning reinforcement. This module took the whole morning to do, which I was not expecting. Weirdly the time flies by fast, though! After a lunch break, I started learning about the rules of the road, which again was a lot of reinforcement of stuff I had already known. Something that is different about all of this is that I have to understand the language of the Coast Guard as they write it. The language used is like nothing I have previously read. That’s the hard part about this whole process. Some of the rules take so long to decode, “The lights and shapes specified in these Rules shall...