Coping with Fear

John was nervous during the first mooring operation, having heard all the stories of accidents and fingers being caught in the winch. He was also very nervous to handle the rope. The boatswain asked him, “what are you doing? The rope will not break!” However, he was nervous that the rope would break and it would cause an accident or damage. The boatswain said it was okay because it was John’s first time. John wanted to learn to perform the mooring operation, so he asked the AB where he could find the mooring plan. That evening and the next day, John studied the mooring plan, what each member of the team was doing, where the ropes were going, what sorts of arrangements were possible, so that he understood what to do during the next operation. He also asked the boatswain to help him learn, and the boatswain was willing to help. The next time there was no problem. (Vignette 5)

Being a newcomer on board involves dealing with new maneuvers, new equipment and situations that might not have been experienced by the cadets before. At the training center, the cadets learn about the consequentiality of actions on board. However, faced with the real-time situations, experiencing maneuvers, working with equipment and dealing with stressful situations causes nervousness due to the fear of the physical consequences of mistakes or accidents. This, in turn, constrains the ability to participate in the practices of the community. Hence, cadets need to proactively learn to deal with the fear in order to participate in the practices on board.

In the vignette above, John is unable to perform the mooring operation because he is nervous about handling the rope. Due to the strength of the rope and the speed of the maneuver, if he lets go of the rope if the rope breaks or he places his hand on the winch, he could cause severe damage to himself and others. In this case, there is proactivity from John’s side in his decision to overcome his nervousness about the task where he asks the AB for the mooring plan. John then demonstrates proactivity again when he goes through the plan in detail and goes back to the boatswain for help. Proactively overcoming the fear to perform certain tasks allows the cadets to engage with the work as other members do and, in doing so, they acquire ‘the embodied ability to behave as community members’ (Brown & Duguid, 1991: 48). Here, we again see that proactivity elicits a positive response from the old-timers. When John asks the boatswain for help, the boatswain is willing to provide help.

A second aspect of coping with fear is related to working with new equipment on board. The first sea-service voyage undertaken by the cadets comes after their first block training at CCTC. Hence, at this stage, while they have seen and observed the working of the navigational equipment during simulator sessions, most would not have had the chance to work with it. Fear arises when the cadet is tasked handling equipment without

prior shore-based training. In the example below the cadet explains the nervousness of touching the wrong buttons due to the fear of the officer’s reaction and the potential consequence of losing the records. Proactivity is shown when the cadet asks the officer for help in learning to perform the procedures.

I: So, the first time you handle the equipment was without any prior training?

I4-C2: Yes, that is what I found very interesting that I could learn about these things. At the same time, I was so very nervous to touch the equipment, and it was only slowly that I became comfortable with using the equipment. The first time I doubt the equipment I was very, very scared to touch the buttons because if I did something wrong maybe if you touch the button and a fault appears, then the officer will be very angry at me if the records inside disappear, something like that. So, then I asked the officers how to do the procedures and sometimes officers are also very busy, so I get some time with them if they’re not very busy to teach me how to do that.

In this example, body work is exhibited through taking the initiative to learn about the equipment in order to overcome the fear that arises when touching it. The cadet’s nervousness arises from the fear of the consequences of an incorrect physical action. Hence, learning the correct procedures in order to be able to perform the correct physical actions, that is, touching the right buttons, is a way in which the body becomes able to do a competent performance of the task.

The findings in this section have shown the ways in which the body enabled or constrained proactivity on board and the ways in which cadets enabled their body in order to act as competent practitioners on board. Here body work refers to the specific kinds of proactivity where the body enabled participation in situations where it was initially a constraint. As such, the three themes of hard manual labor, tiredness, and fear exhibited

the three main reasons due to which cadets would not be able or willing to participate in the practices on board. In order to transition towards fuller membership, some cadets overcame the physical constraints of the body on board and in doing so started to negotiate access to participation through proactivity. The next section moves on to the spatiotemporal aspects of proactivity, where the cadets used the physical space, materials and temporal rhythms on board to enable proactivity.