High School Seniors Are Like Opilio Crab

I love the Deadliest Catch, an action filled Discovery Channel show about Alaskan crab fishermen. I might just eat crab instead of turkey this year because Captain Phil asked me to. But I've never been able to find the education connection I needed to write about the Deadliest Catch on Quick & Ed--until now (not that that stops some of us). And I'd like to say thanks to Inside Higher Ed for giving me the opportunity.

Kent Barnds writes in a column for IHE today about how the tough, hard bitten job of a crab fisherman is like, well, a college admissions officer. Ignoring, of course, the admissions officer's climate controlled office and cushy chair.

Here are a few of the parallels Barnds draws: the unwanted commentary both admissions officers and the now famous fishermen receive from those who haven't actually done the job; the need to catch just the right amount of crab, or students, to meet the quota; and the anxiety of watching the pot come out of the water wondering if it'll be full of crab or just contain a dead fish--much like the anxiety admissions officers face as they get replies from admitted students. Hauling a 700-pound pot filled with crab and risking a paper cut: it all has drama.

Barnds says, "Jonathan Hillstrand, who captains the Time Bandit, once declared “We’d rather be lucky than good any day.” Let’s be candid — it takes quite a bit of luck to predict and “know” where the crab will be and takes just as much to predict and “know” what 17-years olds will think and do." So the end lesson is that, like opilio crab, 17-year old high school seniors are running in herds along the ocean floor and admissions officers are in boats, developing a strategy to find them and figuring out the right bait to haul them in.

At least the admissions officers don't have to toss the females back into the ocean anymore.