Arriving in the Bahamas and Faculty Orientation

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I arrived in the Bahamas yesterday with my parents and stayed with them in their hotel room at the Radisson Cable Beach Resort last night.  Today I will be boarding the ship with all my luggage between 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm for the faculty orientation.  The orientation begins at 4:00 pm this afternoon and will last over the next few days.

There are the meetings I attended today:

1600 - 1730  Introductory Meeting

1730 - 1815 Welcome Reception

1930 - 2000 Faculty Meeting

my mom and me in Nassau, the Bahamas - getting ready to board the ship

me in Nassau, the Bahamas at the ship

Facebook

The great thing about the Internet is that a whopping 460 some students have joined the Facebook.com group for the Spring 2007 Semester at Sea voyage.  That's approximately two-thirds of all of the students that will be on the trip.  As far as I can tell, I'm the only faculty member who has joined the group...however, I'm glad I did because I am already learning a lot in the discussion threads on there.  Additionally, I am able to get a general idea of what people look like and associating names with faces. 

On Facebook, a lot of students have already taken the lead and organized some independent trips.  One person spearheads a trip, researches it and then asks who is interested in going.  Additionally, some students are forming sub-groups already...there are sub-groups for people who are looking for exercise buddies with similar habits, people who want to organize a Bible study group, people who are interested in playing Dungeons and Dragons, people who are willing to share books for classes...you name it and someone is throwing out an idea to try to "pre-identify" people with similiar interests or habits prior to the voyage.  It's a pretty neat way for everyone to get organized and to quell some jitters about what to expect.   I've even posted on Facebook to try to find people who want a pack of free playing cards...I am using about 10-12 decks for an activity in the Intercultural Communication class I'll be teaching and since I don't want to bring them home, I'm giving them away so people won't have to pack their own deck of cards.

I've also posted a thread on the MSN message board for the Semester at Sea Spring 2007 voyage stating that I can be the go-to person if anyone is feeling homesick.  I know how excruciating it was for me when I first went on my first big trip away from home the summer after my junior year in college in 1996..something I now regard as being one of the best experiences of my life.  I was lucky enough to be chosen to be part of a pilot program to study abroad in Germany for 7 weeks.  It was a great opportunity...one that clearly has helped shape me into the person I am today because it gave me confidence to go back and travel on my own, to take on other study abroad trips (notably my summer study in London for 5 weeks in graduate school in 2001) and now I even work 5 hours from where I grew up...something I never thought I would do.  Even my participation in this Semester at Sea trip is a direct result of going on the original study abroad trip in Germany.  If anyone would have told me I would have done all of that back on the original Germany trip in 1996, I would have never believed it.  I was so painfully homesick, I wanted to go home at first...but after about two weeks though, the homesickness abated and I didn't want to leave by the end of the trip. 

I know that this Semester at Sea trip is a big deal and worrisome to some students because it is 14 weeks long.  To someone who is close to his/her family and a boyfriend/girlfriend and hasn't been away from home much in the past, it is a literal shock to the system to change everything.  To some people, it's invigorating...to others it's a source of real biological anxiety and panic.    Physiologically, I really do think that change does "trigger" chemical responses in some people's brains...it's why some people experience anxiety and why some people don't.  Maybe in a weird way my own past experience in feeling that extreme homesickness will help me to get other people through the feelings of homesickness.  A few students have already written to me privately on Facebook to tell me that they know they will need that type of support and will probably come see me to help me talk them through it.  I just hope I can be of some help to them and provide them with some coping strategies during their anxiety.  I feel like because I know so well what it feels like, maybe I'm a bit more equipped to help people cope now.

It's a tough job but...

When I was a student, for some reason, I always thought my professors had everything mapped out for the entire semester from day one.  Little did I know that my professors were probably often only ever one step ahead of the class...something I learned only when I had the task of first teaching a class years ago.  As much as professors might like to appear omnipotent (well, some of them at least), chances are, if you ask your professor about a reading on his/her syllabus that isn't due until weeks from now, that professor probably will not have gotten to that reading (or re-reading) yet...especially if it's a completely new class that person is teaching.  When you are a teacher, sometimes being one step ahead of the class is out of necessity...try planning 14 weeks in advance in any sort of job and it's quite a task.

I bring this up now because having to teach "at sea" requires the professors to really do 14 weeks of prep work all at once.  Essentially, that's what I've been doing and have been buried under books trying to pick and choose interesting things for my classes to do (although a lot of this was already done when I had to submit my basic syllabi last August so that the University of Virginia could approve and essentially vet the material on the syllabus to ensure that it met their rigorous standards).  I can't complain though - I got to propose the classes I would be teaching on this trip and they are subjects I find interesting to begin with.  It's really not hard work when you enjoy getting paid to learn and present the material you learned to students!   

My advice to anyone in college (any students reading this blog?) ...choose a job you naturally gravitate towards.  Do something you enjoy doing - not something you "think" you should be doing (for instance, I used to think I wanted to be a math major in college because I was always good at math...when I looked at the course listings in college, I always found myself gravitating toward classes in English, Communication and Languages...because they sounded like fun.)  Looking back on my own life, I now realize my inherent interest in other cultures began really early.  When I was in first grade, a girl who was adopted from El Salvador entered my class.  I remember going home and asking to learn how to count to ten in Spanish after she arrived in class so I could make her feel like I was interested in her culture!

The moral of the story is that when you do a job you naturally gravitate towards, it's not so bad having to do all the work!  I just watched three films today to help me prepare for the "Cinema and National Identity" class I'll be teaching...something I would do for fun anyway if I didn't "have to" do it to prepare for the trip.

So that's what I have been up to these past weeks...reading, preparing assignments, watching movies...it's a lot of work, but it's work I can do on my own time...at 4 in the afternoon or 4 in the morning (incidentally, I'm making this post around 5:00 am...I am far more productive in the middle of the night for some reason...)

What you find in teaching a class is that the material sticks in your brain in a much more permanent way than it does when you are "merely" a student...essentially because you have to plan how to present the material to a group and you go over the material several times in advance in order to do this.  By the time you teach a class two or three different semesters, that material is permanently etched in your brain!   Far better than the 10% retention (or something like that!) that most people have from a class they took in the past...

I have a great job...I get paid to learn and teach what I learned to others, get summers off and even get opportunities to take sabbaticals once in a while!   

Relatives in India?

I knew that my second cousin Jasmine (my mom's cousin's daughter) had married a man she met in India a few years ago.  I haven't seen Jasmine since we were really small, but Christmas cards get exchanged between our families every year updating us on what people are up to.  My parents just got a Christmas card a few weeks ago from Jasmine's father (who is my mom's first cousin) stating that Jasmine and her husband just had their first child in March, a girl they named Anjali - very cute photos of her enclosed in the card too!  I am not sure if Jasmine and her husband and daughter are living in India now or not though...I know they were when they first got married, but not sure now.  If they end up reading this blog, get in touch with me!   It would be great to get in touch with a relative who can provide first-hand experience and knowledge - and if Jasmine is living anywhere near Chennai, it would be really great to meet up with her in person again!

Shipping Teaching Materials

Another thing I can check off my list - I just shipped off all of the teaching materials I'll be using on the trip.

That's another advantage of being a faculty member on this trip...we have a shipping allowance (up to $200) to send books and other teaching materials to the ship so we don't have to lug it down the Bahamas ourselves. The items have to be received at the place in Florida a few days before the ship leaves from there (apparently some staff and administrators have their orientation in Florida a few days prior to the faculty orientation in the Bahamas). I'm crossing my fingers that everything will arrive okay. I sent the materials in several different boxes so if one box doesn't arrive I won't be completely screwed.

The shipping allowance is supposed to cover the cost of shipping teaching materials to and from the ship, but in my case, most of that is used to ship stuff down there. I did a lot of photocopying this past week and have about five reams worth of paper that was used to print syllabi and other class materials. I have a good deal of books (and some videos) that I am bringing too so I'm glad I don't have to pack them in my suitcase. We get reimbursed for our shipping expenses once the voyage is over and we submit our receipts to the Semester at Sea office in Charlottesville, Virginia. Luckily I won't have nearly as much to ship back home since I'll have distributed most of the materials to the students. When I'm in Hawai'i for the day on May 7, 2007 (a week before the voyage is over), I will probably use that opportunity to try to find a post office where I can ship back my books and videos via Media Mail...hopefully there will be a post office close to where the ship docks.

Contacting Me While I'm Away

Email

Please email me at jenatsea@jenmintzer.com. Since the Internet connection on the ship is slow, I am using this email address to help eliminate any junk or extraneous email.

Sending Letters

I'm posting the mailing deadline dates and addresses in a Word document (see link below) if anyone wants to mail me any letters. You need to mail letters two weeks in advance of when the ship arrives and there is no guarantee I'll even get what is sent, but for those who feel inclined to send anything, here is the info you'll need...

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/document-preview.aspx?doc_id=8296669

Making and Receiving Quick and/or Emergency Calls

I just received the "Explorer SIM card" for my cell phone that I ordered through www.telestial.com last week.

Once I put that in my phone, I will have a new phone number associated with my cell phone - it's actually a phone number with a country code for Estonia. To call me in the event of an emergency, the number to dial from the U.S. is 011-372-5312-7506. Please note that I will only be able to get reception when I am in certain areas. When I'm at sea, the phone obviously won't work. Also, please note that I will only answer the phone if it shows a caller ID that I recognize because there are high costs associated with receiving incoming calls. If you are a fellow shipmate on the voyage who wants to add your phone number to my address book in case of an emergency while we are on a field trip, just make sure you provide me with that number once we are on the ship and I'll add it to my phone.

I obviously don't plan on using my cell phone very much while on this trip because it will be very expensive (see below for the rates per minute when using the Explorer SIM card). It will be nice to have though in case of an emergency and to just call my parents at every port to tell them where I am. If I get eaten by a lion while on safari in Africa, I can call for help from the lion's belly (providing there is reception).

Booking Flights To and From the Ship

Originally posted on December 13, 2006:

Booking flights to get to Nassau
Since I'll be at my parents' house in Pennsylvania over most of the winter break, I researched prices for how much it would cost to fly from Philadelphia to Nassau on January 30.   To get a nonstop flight (which I want to reduce the chances of my luggage getting lost), it would cost something like $400 one way from Philly to Nassau (if I remember correctly).  Flying out of Newark, NJ, is FAR cheaper and really not too much longer of a drive to get to.  I believe the flight costs something like $115 one way.  Needless to say, I'm flying out of Newark on January 30.  My parents will fly down with me for a mini-vacation in the Bahamas and I'll stay in their hotel room the night we arrive.  The next day (January 31), I board the ship for faculty orientation.  The ship leaves on February 4.  My parents will hang out at their hotel and go on the beach through February 3 before flying back home.

Booking flights from San Diego
I need to book my flight from San Diego to Philadelphia for May 14 (the day the ship arrives in San Diego at the end of the voyage).  The ship will get in around 8:00 in the morning and when I asked an administrator for the ship when I should plan on booking a flight home, she said that most people fly home later in the day once the ship gets in.  She informed me that I should probably try to book a late afternoon or evening flight to allow for all the disembarking and customs procedures.  Faculty are apparently one of the first groups to get to disembark, but given that advice, I will likely try to book a red-eye flight back to Philadelphia on May 14, to arrive very early on May 15. A preliminary search for  ticket prices indicates it will only be about $200 or so for a one way ticket from San Diego to Philadelphia with a short layover somewhere like Las Vegas. 

Update on January 7, 2007:  I booked a flight a few weeks ago that I found by searching on Orbitz.com - it was only $103.84 (that's including the taxes and all those extra fees) to get from San Diego to Philadelphia!  Actually, I even saved more money on the flight because I have an account through Mrrebates.com and since I clicked through that site first before making the Orbitz.com reservations, I am going to get $4 back through Mrrebates.com - can't beat a cross-country flight for less than a hundred dollars!   It is a price that covers a nonstop flight from San Diego, CA, to Newark, NJ on Continental Airlines and then an Amtrak train ticket that would take me from Newark to Philadelphia.  However, instead of using the train ticket, I think my parents will end up picking me up at the Newark International Airport since it's only an hour or so drive from their house in Pennsylvania.  It actually doesn't take them much longer to get to the Newark airport than it does for them to get to Philadelphia. 

Change and Growth

The nature of change and growth...after my last post, I began to think about this more and more.  What causes change in a person?  Is it an external impetus that facilitates the change in an individual's psyche or is change, by nature, entirely internal? 

In relating this to this trip, I think it is evident that people who chose to go on this trip already know they want to challenge themselves...it is an internal choice that has already been made to take the opportunity to experience external challenges (ie. travel).  There may be some trepidation about the experience and fear of homesickness, but ultimately, the choice is made to go on the trip - to push oneself to change oneself by experiencing new things.  Accordingly, there is already a pre-determined NEED for change in choosing to go on this voyage.  Does the voyage itself change the people on this trip or does this trip attract people who already are predisposed to changing themselves?  Is it the external challenges that change people or the internal impetus to follow through with the intent to change? 

Instinctively, I'm inclined to say it is the latter.  I think, by temperament (or genetics or something biological), some people are more inclined than others to push themselves (granted, sometimes it's pushing oneself over a cliff and being one's own worst enemy at times...), but I'm inclined to believe that there is a certain "adventure gene" in people that leads them to gravitate towards these types of experiences.   (Wasn't there a study done regarding genetics and people who took extreme risks???...I seem to remember something was done in this vein a while ago)  Maybe it's the same gene that leads people to get antsy quickly when things aren't moving forward or when things stagnate.  Admittedly, I'm likely in this category...is this a uniquely American perspective on how one controls one's life?  To a degree, yes.  Americans, on the whole, tend to feel a sense of control over their own destiny.  The concept that anyone can become president, for instance, is one that finds reiteration in American popular culture - when the fact of the matter is that this simply is not true.  Wealth and the opportunity that wealth buys (and a dose of luck) plays a huge role in who has power in the U.S.  Yet the myth that anyone could be president if one just tries hard enough still is perpetuated to placate the masses into believing one can have power if one just tries hard enough.  Having people believe they have power serves a purpose though.  What is this purpose?  Why is it at the foundation of the American belief system?  These are questions I will likely pose to my students on the ship...so if you are reading this in advance of setting sail, give it some thought...

I digress...the original purpose of this post was to reflect on change and growth.   Regardless of one's culture, change and growth are inevitable...for some that occurs faster and more radically than it does for others.  Why?

I recently perused quotes online about the nature of change and growth.  For whatever reasons, these quotes resonated as being especially salient.

• They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. - Andy Warhol
• It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. - Charles Darwin
• It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows. - Epictetus
• A person needs at intervals to separate from family and companions and go to new places. One must go without familiars in order to be open to influences, to change. - Katharine Butler Hathaway
• Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. - Leo Tolstoy
• The universe is transformation; our life is what our thoughts make it. - Marcus Aurelius
• Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future. - John F. Kennedy
• Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living. - Miriam Beard
• Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. - Mark Twain

How I Learned About Semester at Sea

Some people have asked me how I learned about the Semester at Sea program.  As with most things that affect one's life, I can distinctly remember where I was when I heard about it.  I was in a class in graduate school at American University called "Fundamentals of Digital Media" during the spring semester of 1999.   There was a woman in the class who was a senior in college and she was talking about how she had just done the Semester at Sea program the year earlier.  She said it was the best experience of her life.  What made this a memorable testimony was her enthusiasm.  She raved about it to such a degree that I thought "hmm...I'll have to look that up."  As a result it has always been in my memory. 

When I was looking for a full-time job, I decided to put in an application to teach on the Semester at Sea voyage.   I subsequently got a full-time teaching job and during  my first year there I was contacted to be interviewed by the Academic Dean for a voyage in 2006.  Unfortunately, I had to turn down the opportunity to be interviewed because I knew it wouldn't be possible to leave my job to do that for a semester in 2006. 

As luck would have it, the college where I work offers a semester-long sabbatical for junior faculty members (a junior faculty member is someone who does not yet have tenure...in other words, someone who has not been there for 6 years and gone through the tenure evaluation process).  I put in an application to be considered for this sabbatical for the Spring 2007 semester and I got awarded the sabbatical leave.  Concurrent with this process, I was pursuing getting hired for the Spring 2007 Semester at Sea voyage.  I was hired and everything came together - the sabbatical, getting hired for the Spring 2007 voyage and being able to do this trip while I am only 31 years old and don't have young children yet or any other responsibilities to attend to that would prevent me from leaving for 3 and a half months.

I recently decided to see what other people have said about their past Semester at Sea experiences and platitudes and hyperbole abound.  Over and over again, I keep reading people say "this was the best experience of my life" and "this experience has shaped me to be the person I am today."

You can read some of these rave reviews of past experiences at some of the sites below:

• http://www.43things.com/things/view/171152
• http://www.epinions.com/content_1547673732