What Exactly Will I Be Doing on a Boat for an Entire Semester?

Attending class of course! I just realized I never mentioned anything about the excitement that was registering for classes about a month ago! I wanted this blog to be about my travels but now in retrospect I wish I had written more about the preparation process. Anyway...

Dear SAS,
You should seriously consider not opening registration to every single student at once. Or perhaps updating your servers so as to be able to handle that amount of traffic. Just a suggestion.

Much love regardless,
Lexi

I'm sure they thought they were being clever by having registration at 6:00 AM Mountain time. Surely no one is doing anything but sleeping at that hour, right? Wrong. I was a coxswain for the CU crew team all semester (apparently I was just born to be on the water) and had the pleasure of waking up for practice at 5:00 AM every morning. That morning for registration was the first practice I had to miss all semester and no one was very happy about it. Why couldn't I just register after practice at 7:30? Well, you tell 600+ students that they all get to sign up for classes at the same moment and chaos is bound to arise. I'm honestly amazed I managed to get all the classes I wanted with the number of times the site threatened to crash. Everyone was on at the same time and after 30 minutes I'm sure every class was full. But I got the schedule I wanted!

A 1045 - 1200 Ethics and Human Rights in World Politics
A 1300 - 1415 Language and Globalization
B 0920 - 1035 Global Studies
B 1045 - 1200 Anthropology of Food

We are only allowed to register for 12 credit hours initially, but can sign up for another 3 once aboard the ship. I am still debating whether to add another class or not; I don't want to overwhelm myself with schoolwork but at the same time there are so many incredible professors who come from top universities all over the country (My Anthropology of Food professor is from MIT) and I feel like I should take advantage of the opportunity.

How classes work is we have A days and B days. Since we get so much time off of class while in port, we basically have to attend classes everyday we are at sea, regardless of if it is a holiday or a weekend. Since we don't have the distinction of weekdays and weekends then, we have A days and B days. So if you are wondering what I am up to and it is not a day that we are ashore (see my itinerary on the right), there you have my schedule.

I also received a work study position which means that I have a job aboard the ship and in return I get another $4000 scholarship towards my tuition. My job will be in the Field Office! This is the office that all the Semester at Sea-organized trips go through. And as with classes, I only work on days when we're at sea.

So there you have it, I'm not just sailing the world; I still have to attend classes and work, but I'm not complaining in the least. How could I? This semester is going to be the experience of a lifetime!