Pseudo School: Semester at Sea

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Author: Sommer Hamilton

Sometimes, you just have to leave the Oxy bubble, and studying abroad is a great way to do it. I spent last semester cruising around the world on the University of Virginia’s Semester at Sea program. This program puts 700 students from around the world on a cruise for 100 days dropping them off in Puerto Rico, Brazil, South Africa, Mauritius, India, Malaysia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Hawaii and others on the way. Unfortunately, I had to do classwork too, but Semester at Sea is not real school.

In real school, you do not see your drunk professors dancing in the streets during Brazil’s Carnivale. In real school, you don’t see Nobel Prize winner, 80-something-year-old, Archbishop Desmond Tutu dancing around talking about his “sexy legs.” In real school, you do not have to go pull your professor out of the pool because she forgot to come to class. And only on Semester at Sea is feeding a disliked professor to a hungry lion an actual possibility.

In real school, you do not go on five days of vacation after every three days of class. In real school, “Look, Dolphins!” is not a legitimate phrase to yell during class. At Oxy, you would be embarrassed if you stumbled down the hallways every day, on Semester at Sea you take advantage of the waves to “accidentally” bump into your crush. In real school, you read about the Great Wall, on Semester at Sea, you toboggan down it.

At the Marketplace, you don’t often have reason to whisper “Do you think this is dog?” in regards to your dinner. Rarely at Oxy do we get the chance to eat live termites, warthog, or duck feet. In real school, you would get weird looks if you asked about your friends’ bowel movements; on Semester at Sea, you would often get an enthusiastic answer of “I didn’t get the shits in this country!”

In real school, being suddenly thrown from your bed due to inclement weather is unlikely; the same goes for falling out of the shower. In real school, you don’t have a room steward to make your bed, clean your bathroom, pick up your stuff and do your laundry. At Oxy, our alarm clocks are not our deans’ singing (poorly) “I Feel Good” over a loudspeaker.

Despite all this, Semester at Sea does have some similarities to real school. In both, you learn some of a language, then promptly forget it. You also sleep through classes you don’t want to go to, though it is harder to justify when your classroom is only a one minute walk away. At Oxy and on Semester at Sea, you avoid your professors on campus when you haven’t gone to class, though on Semester at Sea you might avoid them just because you don’t want to see them in their bathing suits. And in all academic situations, you come up with excuses for why you haven’t finished your paper, but at Oxy it is unlikely that the excuse of “the medicine man didn’t show up ” will fly.

I chose this (non-Oxy approved) study abroad program because of the uniqueness of the experience. Spending a semester abroad allowed me to realize what a unique place Oxy is and I now appreciate it so much more. I recommend studying abroad in one place—or many—in order to get outside the Oxy bubble and to get another type of education—whether it’s through “real school” or simply through a bunch of new experiences.

Sara Hamilton is a senior Psychology major. She can be reached at shamilton@oxy.edu.

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