Day Five on the Island

Wednesday is always the longest day of an accreditation visit.

Usually, you have a draft due by the end of the day, including proposed language for commendations and recommendations. You also have interviews with people for much of the day, and you’re writing in between the interviews and talking to other members of the team and trying to determine if there are any issues that the college needs to be praised for or given advice to address. It’s a lot to get done in one day, and it typically starts at 8 a.m. and ends at 10 p.m. or even later, depending upon how quickly you can write. Luckily, the team I’m on finished its work early—we had done a lot of work before coming to the campus—so we got to go back our respective hotel rooms and relax. I even managed to read a few emails from home, most of which I deleted. It’s surprising how few emails I get that are truly important enough to require a response.

This team has been one of the most efficient and well-mannered teams I’ve worked on. It’s been a pleasure hanging out with them and working alongside them this week. It’s going to be a bit strange and sad to go back to the United States and California and home, but I am looking forward to having Mexican food again. And a real hamburger.

I learned today that the dogs all over the island are called “community dogs.” They, not the people, apparently decide where they will live, and then the people in the community will take care of them. That explains why they seem to be rather well fed. Of course, it depends upon what community the dog decides to reside in. The campus has at least three dogs, as does the hotel. The dogs are rather territorial and will bark at other dogs that come into their area. They don’t like strange dogs, but they seem relative okay with strange people so long as you don’t get too close to the home that they are now connected to. Some people do own dogs, of course, and those can be quite aggressive at dissuading strangers from coming too close. We even watched a Chihuahua bark at a much larger dog that got close to its owner’s home. 

We only had one rain shower today. I was in an interview, though, and didn’t even hear it. After a day with eight showers, it was quite a chance of pace. And the trade winds (yes, there are such things) provided a nice, cool breeze for most of the day. You need to be in an area where you can feel the wind, though, since I was in front of the LRC for a well-attended open forum and was sweating profusely. As soon as the forum was over, I had another interview and it was a delight to get back to the air conditioning. You tend to take certain things for granted when you’re around them all the time. I will, hopefully, never take air conditioning for granted ever again.