We’re All In The Same Boat
“My lab partner just isn’t pulling his weight,” a student complained recently to his faculty advisor (not me). “I’m very frustrated and worried about my grade.”
Although the student’s advisor is not a rowing coach or ex-oarswoman, it was crystal clear what the student meant.
I’ve been fooling around with artificial intelligence lately and decided to see what other rowing metaphors are out there, knowing, of course, that I’d know most of them. Claude, the program that is supposed to be good with language queries, helped me out.
This isn’t the first time I’ve thought about how often rowing expressions and metaphors have crossed over into common speech. Our school has rowing, so perhaps more of these linguistic borrowings get used here. For the first time, I thought about how many of them might be used by people with no connection to the sport.
Baseball is the leading contributor of linguistic additions to American English. You might be in a pickle if you strike out. Or you might hit a home run or knock it out of the park when you give a great presentation. Let’s touch base next week, someone might say to you. Has anyone ever gone to bat for you? What about when you need to take a rain check or maybe someone has pinch-hit for you? I’m sure you’d like to be known as someone who is always on the ball.
I have to restrain myself from screaming when I hear someone say, “She’s batting a hundred.” That batting average would be miserable. Batting a thousand is what is meant. And it’s always better to see if your idea is in the ballpark before you get thrown a curveball.
Baseball is the great American pastime, so it shouldn’t surprise us that it leads the league in language contributed to common speech. But rowing holds its own, too. Let’s pull together and make sure that we’re rowing in the same direction.
What else have most of us probably heard? How about when some project that you’ve been working on is dead in the water? Is it because someone on your team has missed a stroke? Or perhaps this idea was doomed from the start because you were rowing into a headwind. If that’s the case, you’d better get everyone to pull together. Maybe you didn’t like the idea much yourself but because you didn’t want to rock the boat, you just shut up and rowed.
A lacrosse player addressed my school in chapel and said, “Exams are coming up next week, and I’m feeling stressed. I know that we are all in the same boat but if we pull together we can get through this.”
I wanted to shout, “Way enough!” Lacrosse players should use lacrosse vocabulary. In a flash, however, I realized that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Speaking of “way enough,” have you ever been engaged in some activity—let’s say moving a heavy piece of furniture—and, tired, sweaty, and fed up with all of the advice you’re getting about the proper way to lift a sofa, someone yells, “Way enough”? Naturally, you freeze immediately, but the non-rowers don’t, and chaos ensues.
Claude included “up the creek without a paddle”—an instance when humans triumph over AI. Only the most clueless person refers to an oar as a paddle. But be generous to your friends. Like the lacrosse player, they can learn. Spread the language of rowing. But don’t catch a crab.
Or as Claude says, “The beauty of rowing metaphors is they often emphasize teamwork, coordination, and the idea that everyone’s efforts matter to move forward effectively.”
Who says AI isn’t intelligent?
Doctor Rowing, a.k.a. Andy Anderson, has been coxing, coaching, and sculling for 55 years. When not writing, coaching, or thinking about rowing, he teaches at Groton School and considers the fact that all three of his children rowed and coxed—and none played lacrosse—his single greatest success.
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