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:
