So..what is Semester at Sea?

Dear Friends and Family back home,

As we near American waters again, tensions and stress aboard the MV Explorer are high.  It’s almost a joke; a 4-day Hawaiian vacation awaits us – just kidding!  Finals are before and after Hawaii.  I have a monster pile of work to do, and a to-do list that is not exactly serving it’s purpose because it’s making me feel trapped since I can’t do a good portion of my to-dos (lack of internet, mostly).  Anyway, I’m not complaining- I just realized that I haven’t yet finished blog posts on India, Vietnam, and Japan and I have yet to tell you almost anything about what being at sea is like.  So, today, in the next 12 minutes before my public speaking class, I would like to tell you what a typical (ha) day at sea is like.

First of all, Semester at Sea is not for “creatures of habit” or people who have a hard time without a set schedule they can depend on.  That’s not to say anything bad about the program; it’s just the nature of the beast, as they say.  When we are at sea, the most regular schedule can happen, and every day is a class day.  Day of the week and date matter almost not at all; instead, days at sea are either an A or B day.  Classes are on either A or B day.  Global Studies, a class that the entire shipboard community is supposed to take is on both A and B day.  The same lecture gets done twice.  Conveniently, I am in the A-day section of Global and so, on the days that I don’t feel like going, I can just make it up the next day (the B-day people don’t have that luxury).  Global is a lecture class in the union where everyone collects.  The professor stands on the stage behind the podium (sometimes moves around) and talks to us about globalization.  “Globalization in the Post-Colonial Flat World” is the theme of global studies this semester.  The textbook for the class is “The World is Flat” by Thomas Freidman, which, if you’re interested, is actually pretty good.  Because there are so many people on the ship who are supposed to see/attend global, it is also broadcast to each classroom on the ship so you can watch it elsewhere if interested.  Also, on A-days, I have Public Speaking, which I am headed to now.

My Public Speaking class is great.  It’s very small, three really wonderful lifelong learners attend the class and our professor is incredible.  She is a professor somewhere in Pennsylvania and is wild!  No one else in the world can teach like her, I bet.  I’m not even sure how to describe it except that she has this thing about her that makes you want to do well and she will tell you (pretty explicitly) if you’ve disappointed her.  I’ve learned at LOT that way.  My first speech totally blew and she said “wow, kiddo.  Are you feeling well today?  Just say no, it’s a good excuse.  You are a smart kid.  What the hell was that?!”  You can believe I tried harder on my next speech, which was the one on autumn that I did do pretty well on.  She gave me much more constructive criticism after that one, and my last one (that I did two days ago) went beautifully.  I got an A.  The class was awesome too, because we never had any restrictions on what we were to talk about, so we learned a ton about things some of us had never heard of before.  Speaking classes are cool that way. 

After public speaking class on A days, I have lunch with whoever is around (a great thing about the ship – everyone is always around) and I work on my homework for B day classes.  Most of the time, I work outside on one of the decks or I take a nap on the fifth deck where it’s usually quiet.  When we’re at sea for an extended amount of time, it’s easy to feel like we’re stuck inside a snow-globe because that is really what it looks like.  There is the ship, and nothing but ocean, sky, and horizon.  It’s a huge half-circle, and we’re sitting on the horizontal.  Snow-globe.  Dinner is served everyday from 1730 to 1930 and since… Mauritius (I think), I get together with a group of great people on 5th deck aft and have a glass of wine, talk, and watch the sunset.  Sometimes we bring a guitar and various other instruments we’ve picked up around the world and play a little music.  We call ourselves the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Wine-Club Band.  It’s something I’m really going to miss about SAS:  Sunsets and great conversation…every night.  After dinner, Explorer Seminars start.  Explorer Seminars can be on anything, and taught by anyone and there are about four to chose from each night.  I’ve been to Explorer Seminars on things like “Hurricane Katrina – A Survivor’s Perspective” to “Japanese Playground Games” to “The Future of Journalism” to “African Textiles.”  After Explorer Seminars, there is usually some function in the Piano Bar area for socialization or something, and there are almost always movies showing in different classrooms for different classes.  At 2200 each night, there is a snack in the dining room that is pretty popular.  It’s funny writing about this because it’s an interesting task to think about what you actually do with your time.  Think about it:  what do you usually do at night?  Where does the time go between dinner and bedtime? 

On B days, I have two classes:  International Service Learning and Global Music.  Global Music could have been a really cool class (it was alright, it could have been spectacular) but we didn’t learn as much as I thought we might have.  A few of my experiences in port with that class were some of my best experiences, but I just wish we did more in class.  We are all now masters of playing Ghanaian drums, but we didn’t spend nearly as much time as we should have on Indian music, for example.  The professor was also always entirely too scattered to be a good professor.  He is a known jazz musician, but he has two-year old twin daughters on the ship, so he’s always just fried.  I did get some excellent music on my computer from the class though.  Service Learning, on the other hand, was absolutely the best class I’ve taken in my entire college career for many, many reasons.  I have the most work, the hardest work, and the most meaningful work for this class than I’ve ever had for a class and too much to tell about this class than I can write here.  This is one that I will have to talk about in person when I can show you the pictures and my portfolio and tell you the stories.  This is the class that we did the $100 Solution in.  In the beginning of the class, Dr. Strenecky said to us:  “You will get out of the class what you want to get out of it.  You are to take charge of your education.”   Not only did I learn what service learning actually is, but I participated (and took lots of leadership roles) in all of the countries we did $100 Solutions in (Ghana, India, Vietnam, and Hong Kong).  Even more, I designed, implemented, and finished my own $100 Solution separate from the others in Vietnam as my A-project for the course.  I get chills when I think about this class.  You’ll just have to wait to learn more until I get home and talk with you about.  Not only that, but the man who invented the $100 Solution, who is known around the world as the man who started the $100 Solution, and who writes textbooks on Service Learning was the guy we got to learn from, work with, live with, eat meals with, and travel with.  Semester at Sea has afforded me so much more than I ever thought it could have.  I am published on two different websites with the write-ups I did for the $100 Solution projects and the Global Nomad Group followed and interviewed me in India to make one of their documentaries about the $100 Solution.  It’s been an incredible journey.     

Sometimes at night, we have really great drum circles with the drums that MTV bought Semester at Sea when they did Real World in 2000 under the stars in the middle of the ocean on 7th deck aft.  You know…

Sometimes in the morning, I go to the same place in the aft and do morning yoga or meditate on the beautiful life I’ve found myself in. 

…I finished this about 4 days after I started writing it.  It’s now 0037 hours and we are docking in Honolulu, Hawaii at 0600.  I should be asleep, but I’m sitting out in the hallway finishing this up and feeling a little bit nostalgic about missing this place in less than two weeks.  That being said, here is a list of things I’ve been missing about home/Oneonta-home.

Family
Friends
Of course.
Good coffee that is not made with syrup
Will-dog
The comfy green chair
Having my cuddle muffin jump into my bed
Cooking
Building my kayak with Dad
Having Zanna’s house and people over to “study” Arabic or math and drink tea
Having my own place
The cow path
The local bus in Oneonta
Mittens, scarves, hats
Speakers so my music actually sounds good
Raking leaves with my bests while listening to The Decemberists from the roof
Real coffee (did I mention that?)
A kitchen
Rest