Our voyage is not a "cruise." It's longer. More deliberate. Deeper. It's much slower. It's more difficult, and it's much more rewarding!
Journeys of discovery
sparking bold solutions
to global challenges
The Mission of Semester at Sea
It takes a few weeks, but we will find a rhythm of hours and days, crossings and countries. At first the days and the countries will fly by in a flurry of excitement and sweltering novelty. Then in mid-Journey we will discover a meta-routine with long sea voyages and long visits in cultures that are very different from one another and especially from home. You will wake up one day to find you haven't worn socks in many weeks. The mid-Voyage time feels like life, as if we have always lived like this. Finally, we will journey quickly toward Europe under the shadow of disembarkation. Poignant and filled with meaning-making.
The voyage naturally divides itself into sea crossings and country sojourns, and they happen over and over. The two components (sea and land) feel very different from one another. Sea days are school days and have a consistent and predictable schedule of classes and meals and other programming. Sea days are comfortable. Country days are wild and can be unpredictable, with travel and heat and exploration and novelty. By the time you get back on the ship you will feel you’ve been on land for a very long time, and vice versa.
The voyage is structured to tell a story, and it’s my job as Global Studies Director to help give that story shape. I am joined on stage each morning by a sociologist and an historian who help us link natural and social sciences with humanities as we travel. Our long journey is from East to West; from Hinduism and Buddhism to Islam to Christianity; from Colonized to Colonizers; from crushing poverty to ostentatious overconsumption. Global Studies includes natural science (that’s me), plus social science and the humanities. We will explore the geography of the Old World, the impacts of climate and environmental degradation, and the hopeful progress being made around the world on climate mitigation and adaptation that also builds resilience, opportunity, and dignity. We will see the legacies of centuries of colonial oppression and racism manifest across every country we visit. We’ll learn about the different perceptions of time and personal space and work and play across cultures, and the way people and families interact differently with their larger societies. We’ll learn about the history and politics and economic systems of each country before we arrive, to give intellectual context to our visits.
Early in the voyage, we’ll barely have time to learn the most basic things about each destination because the sea crossings are short. Mid-voyage we’ll undertake some long crossings that give us time to delve more deeply into the way the world works in all its glory. Some of these crossings will involve huge changes in latitude and attitude. Almost certainly, there will be a storm or two which will rock our world. We’ll travel from the perpetual summer of Equatorial Kenya to the first chill of autumn deep in the Southern Hemisphere of Cape Town. At the end of the voyage you will suddenly find the chill of early spring in western Europe and will have to dig deep in your cabin for a hat and gloves or maybe grab a Lyft to a shopping mall in Spain.
The changes are constant, and the voyage encompasses all of them. For most of us, the sequence of episodes and experiences is deeply affecting. The shared nature of the many chapters of the voyage will allow us to bond as a community of shipmates. Imagine how this feels to the students, many of whom have never been out of the US or far from their families! Students’ voyages are almost universally experienced as transformative or even life changing. You will meet people our age who recall their own voyages decades past wistfully and are still close to their ship’s companions as they move through their later lives.