Walking the ship, I would ask the crew questions about their equipment and what they were working on. They were skeptical about these questions initially. That’s because normally I would have been “questioning,” not curious. I would have been asking questions to make sure they knew the equipment. Now I was asking questions to make sure I knew the equipment. My unfamiliarity with the sub’s technical details was having an interesting side effect: since I couldn’t get involved with the specifics of the gear, I opened up space to focus on the people and their interactions instead, and to rely on
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