Many Puget Sound students go looking for the paradigm-shifting, character-challenging, horizon-expanding, once-in-a-lifetime adventure that is the Undergraduate Study Abroad Experience. I went looking for Atlantic sea monsters.
I am in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, briefly. I am participating in a Sea Education Association semester that includes six weeks on land and six weeks at sea. I will sail the Corwith Cramer, a three-mast, 135-ft sailboat, from Key West, FL to St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands. I and my 17 shipmates arrived in Woods Hole January 3 (barely two weeks after my last final at Puget Sound) and immediately dove into classes on oceanography, nautical science, and maritime studies. By the end of these six short weeks we will be able to chart our own course across the Atlantic, navigate by the stars, speak like real jack-tars, and perform research on biogeochemical relationships of the blue ocean we sail.
The Corwith Cramer
My shipmates come from a wide range of academic and personal backgrounds. A recently graduated business and economics major from Connecticut. A junior environmental policy major from Chicago. A freshman biology major from Georgia by way of Bermuda. A junior geology major from the University of Puget Sound (shout out to Cat Jenks). Even in these first three days we’ve been immersed in ocean sciences, and those non-science majors have started to squirm. But, like a good cooperative crew, we find ourselves discussing homework and offering help over dinner and between bunks.
Another of our team-building challenges is the weekly grocery run. We are responsible for feeding ourselves on a weekly budget. Do you know how many loaves of bread it takes to feed nine people for seven days, assuming three are men in their early twenties, four are collegiate athletes, one is lactose intolerant and one is allergic to MSG? That, on top of approximately 60 pages of reading, was our homework assignment for the night before the first day of classes. Thanks to our thrifty shopping so far, however, we are swimming in extra cash and will be eating ice cream sundaes all weekend.
Also in recent news, I broke the coffee pot last night. What were you doing with a coffee pot at night, Mary? Getting back into my regular college habits, of course (shout out to my mother). Most of my housemates (roughly half my shipmates) are remarkably proactive students; they do homework in their spare time, exercise over lunch breaks, are regularly in bed by 2300, and don’t drink coffee. I am trying to learn from them.
I am certain that I will learn, grow, expand, shift, adventure, and all that with this crew. Though I haven’t given up my hope of a kraken or sea serpent sighting.
Kraken