How I Got Here

I actually didn’t know that I was going on this trip until about three months ago. The engineering department at UCSB very strongly encourages their students to follow the four year schedule they have laid out, and being the good student that I am, I was right on track. As of June, I had resigned to the fact that my remaining year of college would be another blur of equations, computers, and sleep deprivation, and then I would be spit out the other end and grow up. Then one morning in the CAD Lab as I was getting my exercise walking from my computer to the printer, I overheard a guy named Eric telling somebody that he was going to abroad in the fall. I stopped to talk to him for a minute, and from there my life took a big change. I went online, and Semester at Sea still had space, which is pretty rare that late in the year. My application was in the mail that afternoon. After that, everything just fell into place like it was meant to happen. So Eric, I don’t really know you, but thanks a lot man.

I had known about Semester at Sea for a while, but I never thought I would be able to go. Classes in engineering are sequenced and only offered once a year, so missing this one quarter sets me back a whole year. Thank God! Now I get to spend the fall traveling the world, and then spread out 3 quarters of work over 5 quarters when I get back. My professors are always telling me to think outside of the box. I finally get it! I just had to make my own bigger five-year box. Go travel, slow things down, and stay an extra year; what a wonderful solution to my rapidly diminishing enthusiasm for academics

Semester at Sea is a program through UVA that takes about 600 college students on a ship, and circumnavigates the globe over 100 days, and stops in about 10 ten different countries. Classes are taking on the ship while out at sea, and when in port we get to travel unrestricted. About half the days are spent traveling, with the other half out at sea. My particular voyage sets sail in Ensenada, stops in ports all over Asia, transmits the Suez Canal while we are in Egypt, and then stops in a few countries in the Mediterranean before we cross the Atlantic and end in Florida. This really is the trip of a lifetime.

I spent the summer working at a bike shop, and didn’t spend too much time preparing for the trip. I figured that things would work themselves out. How do you prepare yourself for life in ten foreign countries anyway? I don’t think you really can. I know very little about most of these cultures, and I think its best to just show up without any pre-conceptions. My plan is to pack light, stay flexible, keep an open mind, and see where I end up. The stage has already been set, and I will let life unfold however it will.

I have about two weeks until we land in Japan and my world gets a whole lot bigger.