“Where did you study abroad?” Is one of the most complicated questions I have had to answer after returning home last spring. Because I wasn’t in just one place — I was on a moving cruise ship. Yes, I studied abroad on a cruise ship, and circumnavigated the globe for 112 days. “Well, I studied around the world,” is usually my response, but no matter how I say it I end up sounding like a pretentious a**hole — but I don’t know what else to say. When I first started to tell people I was doing UVA’s Semester At Sea study abroad program last spring, a lot of people doubted me. “That’s not school,” or, “Oh, so you’re just doing an extended spring break?” were my favroite responses. But there was so much more to Semester At Sea than being able to swim and tan on the pool deck in between classes. The funny thing is, I learned more during my time at sea then I ever thought possible; it provided such a unique learning environment that made learning…fun. I learned more about myself and the world in four months abroad then I had ever thought I would learn in my entire life, and my college experience would not have been the same without it.
I’ve never been keen on wanting to stay in the same place for too long. When I started looking at colleges, one of the first things I looked for was a place outside of Pennsylvania, where I live. I also looked at potential study abroad options. For a number of years, I had my heart set on going to Australia — I wanted to go somewhere that spoke english and could be a place I might not otherwise be able to go to after college. It was not until a friend introduced me to Semester At Sea that my dreams of going to Australia turned into dreams of traveling around the world. I never thought I would be interested in going Asia, but her pictures and stories looked so amazing, I couldn’t refuse an opportunity to travel to 13 different counties in just one semester. In my time abroad, I visited Hawaii, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, Myanmar, India, Mauritius, South Africa, Namibia, Morocco, England, Ireland, and Wales. Plus, SAS was one of the few study abroad programs that offered Media Studies classes, so it felt like a done deal. Throughout the application process, I found out that I would most likely need to take out extra student loans because of the extra costs tha came along with this particular program. However, in the end I wouldn’t give back a single cent in exchange for all of the incredible experiences and memories I made while at sea.
Spring semester of 2015, I took five classes and was able to add them to my class tracking sheet so I can graduate on time. Four of the five classes I took at sea each had a field trip or “field lab” built into the curriculum where students would travel one day in a given port to do something related to their course work. For example, in one of my classes (Consumer Behavior) we went to a Kobe beef farm and a Sake factory in Japan to learn about the different target segments for these Japanese products. And yes, as a class we ate a lunch of Kobe beef and got to try Sake samples with our professor. Every day at sea we would have classes, regardless of whether or not it was a Saturday or Sunday, because the days we were in other countries, we could do whatever we wanted. Learning at sea was so incredible — it felt like my course content really mattered and made sense for one of the first times in my academic career. In both college and high school classes, when I went to class the content seemed to matter for the hour and a half I was in lecture. However, once class was over, often times it felt like the material was out of sight and mind. At sea, the things we learned during our class time were things we experienced first-hand in our travels to each port, so I got to understand why the content was important. It felt like learning could come into a full circle, and that it meant something more than just trying to get a good grade. In addition, class felt like more than just sitting and listening — class became a comfortable space to learn and where we could cultivate meaningful conversation, not just about course content, but about life. My professors were more like parents to me, and were always looking out for the student’s well-being; there was more than one occasion where I sat down and had lunch or dinner with a professor, just because I could. For the first time in my life, my educator felt like my equal and colleague, not just an authority figure.
When we were in port, every day was an adventure. Every day in a new country provided the opportunity to better understand the world and people from other countries & cultures very different from my own. It gave me the chance to feel alive in a whole new sense. My adventures abroad feel like they will never be matched in my future endeavors; I hiked some of the Great Wall of China, walked around ancient Cambodian ruins, went wine tasting in South Africa, and rode an elephant through India…just to name a few. I tasted foods I had never heard of, met people who were kind enough to help a silly confused tourist (me), and I got to do some downright crazy sh*t (like cage diving with Great White Sharks or getting far too intoxicated in Toyko). There were so many places and things I saw that many people will never hear of in their lifetime. I met and became friends with people I would have never otherwise have befriended, and now I have a whole new family in all parts of the country. There were so many times where I felt insecure and confused about who I was and what I wanted out of my life, but those moments of weakness resulted in the building of a stronger and better person — someone I wanted to be. Most of all, SAS taught me that the world is not one-sided. Far too often I had looked at the world through the lens of right and wrong, based on the way I lived in my own culture. SAS made me realize that not only am I incredibly privileged, but that my way of life is not the only way.
It feels impossible to describe how four short months changed my life and college experience. Coming back to CUA at first felt incredibly lonely and strange, because I could not go back to the way I had lived at school before I studied abroad. It felt impossibly empty to look out the window during lecture and not see the expansive sapphire stretch of ocean. In my time at SAS, I missed my CUA community in ways I never thought I would. But now I see that studying abroad helped me to appreciate my school, and it helped me to realize the person I wanted to be in my last two semesters in college. My education would have been severely lacking had I never studied abroad. Not just because of the things I learned in class, but because of everything else I learned about myself and others.
One year ago I was on a 800-person ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and I will be forever grateful for everything that SAS taught me about life, the world, and myself. Once a SAShole, always a SAShole.
“Now, more than ever, do I realize that I will never be content with a sedentary life — that I will always be haunted by the thoughts of sun drenched elsewhere.”