Today was the annual Spring Career Fair here at MMA, where dozens of companies come to try and recruit this year’s graduating class, as well as some of the other cadets for internships and cooperatives. There were close to 100 companies represented, from all over the country and the world.
I only stopped and talked with a few companies, since the main focus of this career fair was to help juniors and seniors line up jobs, so underclassmen were a lower priority.
The Department of Homeland Security and Transportation Security Administration have created a federal identification system for all personnel working in the maritime industry. The ID is called Transportation Worker Identification Credential with the intention of more effectively regulating and maintaining port security.
All license track cadets here at Mass Maritime are required to enroll in TWIC to be in compliance with maritime regulations. We’ll need these cards when we do our commercial shipping co-op in Junior year, as well as once we graduate and are employed in the maritime industry.
Today is our last day in Golfito. Everyone’s had a good time, but I think we’re ready to be on our way. At the moment, however, most people are focused on the Super Bowl just a few hours away. We’ve been told, as I posted yesterday, that a projector is going to be set up on the helo deck so we can watch the Super Bowl as one big group, which should be a lot of fun!
This morning at 0900 we had the official Coast Guard-inspected fire & emergency and abandon ship drills. It took about 90 minutes, and appeared to run smoothly, so we now have the official seal of approval to ship out! We have less than 24 hours until we depart, though you might not know it from the atmosphere on board. Everyone is continuing to go about business as usual, and I think it’s a testament to the planning and execution of pre-departure tasks that nobody seems to be feeling rushed or pressed for time.
U.S. Coast Guard from Air Station Cape Cod ran a series of airborne insertion and extraction drills at Massachusetts Maritime Academy last week in conjunction with the T.S. Enterprise.
