Today, I woke up feeling MUCH better than last night. My head still hurts (kind of like a dull, but consistent pressure headache that I can’t seem to kick. After breakfast, everyone on the ship was required to attend an orientation session. This morning’s sessions were on academic integrity (only the 8,133,847th lecture I have heard about this throughout my college career), library resources, and field trips. It was super-long, and I still have about 4 more hours to sit through this afternoon. I am taking some materials to read for the afternoon session so I can try and get a jump start on my classes – which begin tomorrow at 8 AM! Yes, 8 AM. I think that it’s a little ironic that I’ve successfully managed to avoid 8 AM classes throughout Penn State and Maryland, but I have to get up early EVERY single day of my SUMMER voyage…oh dear. Not that I’m complaining…just sayin’ is all.
Later in the day…
Tonight I went to a Involvement Symposium in the union. It was really interesting to see how closely the Semester at Sea program actually resembles a floating campus. For example, almost every college would have an involvement fair of some sort at the beginning of the semester. On Semester at Sea, instead of having a fair, each of the staff coordinators/advisers stand up in the union and say a few things about their program and then place themselves in different areas of the ship. The students then walk around to the different classrooms and sign up to participate in various committees, activities, or groups. It is interesting to see how this familiar event is modified in order to be manageable on a ship!
After the Involvement Symposium, I went to my “Sea” meeting, which is like a floor meeting. I helped to run an icebreaker type game to help the students meet each other. After the meeting (around 10 pm), Erin, Kevin, and I went up to the super-special-and-exclusive faculty and staff lounge. Kevin is the LLC (or living learning coordinator) for our sea – the Mediterranean Sea! He’s probably the most easy-going and patient person I’ve ever met and I think the three of us are going to make a great team! So…in the extra-awesomely-cool lounge, there were a bunch of faculty and staff having a birthday party! They were celebrating all birthdays from January until June….which, as some of you might recall…includes ME! Yay! You know how I LOVE a good impromptu birthday celebration. Especially when I happen to be one of the guests of honor! (And especially when there’s wine! And cake!) haha It was fun! I got to meet some other staff on the ship…including a man commonly referred to as “The Voice.” His real name is Tom and he is like an assistant dean or something, but one of his jobs is to make all of the ship’s announcements (aka being "The Voice") which he takes very seriously. His dry sense of humor is hilarious and when we hear the signal, everyone stops what they are doing to listen to what he might say next. Overall, it was a fun night. It’s nice to be making more connections outside of my program. The people on this ship have such interesting and diverse experiences. It's cool.
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