Classes

Before I left home I heard a lot of comments like “booze-cruise” in regards to the Semester at Sea trip. I’ve been anxious to dispel all the rumors for some time. Going to school on a ship is absolutely incredible. I wake up every morning in the middle of a deep blue ocean. I sit outside on the deck for meals and I watch the sunset every night. It is the most incredible location to be in. The fact that this is my campus is still hard to grasp. While I can lay out on deck between classes, I do have to actually go to classes. I take 4 courses, 1 of which the entire ship takes. My other three classes take attendance every single day so skipping isnt easy. I have less class days and therefore much less work than I would have at home however, on top of the work we have, we are also traveling the world. In addition, we don’t get weekends off to catch up. Every day on the ship is a weekday and even after 5 days of endless, tiring travel, we come back without a day to catch up. We get back on the ship on Saturday and Sunday morning there is already readings and papers due. So as far as the rumors go about this being a semester off from school, I can assure you that it isn’t. While it isn't as challenging academically as Syracuse is, I'm still going to school.

The beauty of it is that while I’m enrolled in courses and doing plenty of reading, the lessons that I am learning in country far exceed anything I could ever learn from a textbook.