I could go on for hours writing about my time on Semester at Sea, but I’ll try to sum it up. Exactly one year ago, Spring 2023, I went on Semester at Sea. Shout out to the 131! I had an absolutely incredible time, unlike anything else. I got to see three continents, 11 countries from popular countries like Greece to places like Kenya and Jordan. Semester at Sea, or SAS, is an extremely unique study abroad program, and the bonds you create with people are unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Traveling on a cruise ship for 3 ½ months with people allows you to grow closer, create unique experiences with each other, and travel the world exploring together. Spending everyday together, on the ship hanging out by the pool or in port traveling together, you become incredibly close to the people around you. Since the ship is relatively small for a cruise ship, you get to know everyone even if it’s just in passing. The people I met on my voyage have become lifelong friends whom I consider to be my ‘forever people’. After the voyage it felt like I knew these people for a lifetime.

The community on the ship is incredible. Everyone is extremely friendly and always willing to help and support. This goes for on and off the ship, especially off the ship. It is such a surreal feeling when you dock in a port, take a plane or train to an entirely different region of the country, and see your fellow SASers traveling and exploring. Everyone is always willing to help one another. We had a saying on the ship, “SASers help SASers”. And it is so true. My favorite part would be in port and you, and your friends are on an excursion or visiting a famous building or area and see other groups of SASers along the way. The community on this ship between not only other students but with the other voyagers like the professors and Resident Directors is one of the most comforting experiences. No matter how well you know them, or just seen them along the way, everyone is willing to help each other, as we are all in this together.

A big comment I have heard, and experienced was the internet. While you are at sea, there is extremely limited internet. There is the selective internet used for studying, research, and class-based information, and personal internet. The personal internet is rumored to be about seven minutes of internet a day. While it may be slightly true, it’s not the entire truth. Based on the plan you select; you can get a variety of megabytes of internet per day. While you feel out of touch with the world, I feel it made my experience so much better. It helped create more genuine relationships and alleviated so many distractions. There really is no need for scrolling on TikTok when you are traveling the world on a cruise ship with 500+ students, faculty, life-long learners, and ship kids (the professors’ kids). For my voyage, we were the first voyage to have access to WhatsApp without using your daily internet. It connected the students across the ship and gave us the ability to talk to family and friends back home without having to use your allotment.

There are 4 computers in the library that have 24/7 access to the internet. This is where we all spent hours planning excursions and booking flights, trains, busses, and hotels or hostels. Some advice I would give would be to plan early as all 500+ students also need to share those computers to book their stuff, but not too early because sometimes the ship must divert to a new country due to issues in or near that country or weather. For most of our bookings, we would stay up late or go early to get the most time out of the computers, so you have plenty of time to figure out what the group wants to do, comparing prices, and where you want to visit. I would recommend using TripAdvisor to book the excursions and housing and using sites like Flex for busses. Another tip I would mention is a lot of people bring a lot of USD to convert into the new currencies for each country. This is not the best method since as soon as you dock, everyone is going to want to venture off and do things and you’ll have to go to a currency conversion store which are not readily available. I would recommend getting a debit card that has no ATM fees or foreign transaction fees. The card I would recommend for this program would be the Charles Schwab card. I was constantly pulling out cash for me and my friends which saved so much time compared to having to find a conversion office.

 

Noah Monnich

Semester at Sea

Spring 2023