Life after SAS: “The New Normal”

My fellow SASser/Shipmate wrote the following reflection about the voyage. It not only sums of this Spring voyage, but what I know is true after having completed two voyages. The truth is: the voyage only continues after walking on land after having been rocked by the waves. I don’t know if i’ll ever be back on the ship – perhaps to teach? to work? as a lifelong learner? One thing is for sure – life on the ship is unique. One can always go on a cruise, meet amazing people, travel the world, learn about incredibly interesting topics – but the combination of all of them – in four months? Irreplaceable, unforgettable, a new normal for sure.

“Dear friends,

This is our new normal.

I couldn’t tell you what day of the week it is, but I know either it’s an A Day, B Day or Study Day. Our closets are full of Vietnamese straw hats, Aung San Suu Kyi shirts, and Indian elephant pants. We aren’t frat stars or hipsters. We are SASers, and three and a half months and ten countries later we all share a new normal, a new perspective of the world we live in. And it’s all because of Semester at Sea.

Back home, I would have spent most of this semester complaining about the snow, I’d have gone to the same parties with the same people each weekend, and I’d be freaking out about what I wanted to do with my life. Instead I karaoke’d in Japan, climbed the Great Wall of China in the freezing snow, sailed on the holy river Ganges in India, and got lost in the world’s largest market in Morocco. I’m still freaking out about what I want to do with my life. But that’s ok.

I’m more aware of the world we live in and realize how beautiful, how strange, and how scary it can be. And I did this all with some of the coolest, smartest, goofiest, most wonderful people that I’ve come to know and love. I am — we all are — the luckiest people in the world.

But it wasn’t always this way. Our new normal is the result of a long journey, one that started back in January in Ensenada, Mexico where we anxiously waited in line to board the ship for the first time. With suitcase, passport, and yellow fever papers in hand, we began looking around at all these strangers and began to think: “Are you my roommate?” “Are we going to be best friends?” “Are you my future wife?” “Oh, I hope you’re my future wife.”

Soon these strangers became friends, and we began to adjust to life on a floating university, a place where classrooms look out to the vast ocean and seasickness is a legitimate excuse for missing class.

But the part of travel that we don’t talk about enough is the relationships – the people you travel with are just as important as the traveling itself. With these people we were allowed to be scared, to be vulnerable, and to be truthful, to each other and to ourselves.

It was with these new friends that I woke up to watch the sunrise on the 6th deck outside and sat on the 8th deck to watch the sunset. Instead of texting or checking Facebook, we all focused on the sun and talked about how beautiful it was. This was our new normal — life on the MV Explorer, our new home away from home.

And then we came to Japan, where our new normal was changed once again. As soon as we’d learned to navigate life at sea, we had to navigate through new ports with new languages, new cultural norms, and new challenges.

Our lives were changing so much and so quickly, but with this new adjustment, we began to adjust ourselves. We began discovering things about who we were as we were in the process of creating ourselves. All of a sudden, this whole travel-around-the-world thing wasn’t so intimidating. And all of a sudden, the MV Explorer was no longer a home away from home, but it was our home. This is the new normal in which we now live.

Soon we will adjust to another new normal — life after SAS. We’ll go back to driving on roads instead of sailing on waters. When we read about Myanmar and Ghana in the news, we’ll not only know where they are, but we will think of the bonds we made with people in those countries. When we left home we were citizens of our own countries, but when we come back we will be citizens of the world.

Despite feeling like a new person, a new citizen of the world, I’m not so naīve to believe that Semester at Sea will solve all of our problems. We will not come back to our homes and have all the answers to life’s questions. We’ve learned firsthand that we cannot change the world, not in the ways that we might think we can or should. No matter our intentions, there will always be poverty, there will always be sickness, and there will always be corruption and injustice. We can’t change the world, simply because the world has changed us. But I have some good news — returning to our familiar places does not mean that you have to return to your old way of thinking.

Semester at Sea does not end in London when we fly back to our homes and reunite with our family and friends, and it doesn’t end when we graduate college and start careers and families. As the years go on we will see our journey come out in the smallest but most amazing ways. Our voyage on the MV Explorer is ending, but like John Tymitz always said to his students, “The best is yet to come.”

So may your days be full of joy and wonder.

May you always remember the moments you were challenged and confused and hurt by the world, the times you were inspired and floored by the simple gestures of kindness by strangers, and the moments you felt on top of the world.

May you continue to travel the world, but may you also rediscover your old home, and challenge yourself to see your home in what it could be, rather than what it once was.

May you continue watching the sunsets and sunrises wherever you may be, and always remember the people you watched them with.

May we embrace this new way of thinking and make the world a better place for ourselves, a place where we don’t set limitations, but rather we set destinations.

May we always be Emerald Shellbacks. May we always be world travelers. May we always be the crazy wonderful people that we became. May we always be friends.

May we always be Semester at Sea.

With love,

Brady Gerber”

Another Beautiful Reflection

At the voyage’s closing ceremonies, one of my shipmates,, Jalil Bishop,  had the opportunity to talk about his experience, which he so beautifully summed up in the discourse below:

” Semester at Sea has allowed me to reflect on what is important in my own life. Being at Dartmouth, I spend a lot of time resume building and networking. Always looking for the next step to make myself competitive in the so-called real world outside my college campus. But this is the real world. And for the past 4 months my real world has allowed me to put more time into relationships than my resume and more time into cooperation with the people around me than competing. This voyage has taught me the struggle for a better life, is truly meaningless, unless it involves the ones around you. The ones you call friends, the ones you love, and the ones you smile at just to acknowledge their being. Semester at Sea has taught me that relationships are what matter, what you remember, what gives you an anchor. I was blown away by how people with such little material wealth around the world, were so rich in happiness. In America, I am taught that happiness comes with large salaries, big houses, and fast cars. But so many people I met throughout the countries found happiness in each other; they did not have to pay for it. They just had to be present and appreciate those who were present around them. So my goal is to be present, present in my own life and the lives that intertwine with mine.

In regards to my educational experience, Semester at Sea has allowed me to see that no one is the authority on knowledge and the hierarchical method where the professor just lectures the student may be wrong. Global studies allowed us to see students in the teacher role and that we are capable of our own knowledge. We were taught to fear the townships, favelas, and certain cities but when we experience those places we found hard working people who greeted us with grace rather than the drugs, guns, and violence that we were warned about. I understand my role as a student does not mean that I do not have expertise to share, and it does not mean my voice should come second to the professor. Being a student is not a stage in life but a constant commitment to learning from and listening to others. As a student I do not have to wait till I have degrees behind my name or years under my belt. The time is now to commit to creating my own knowledge, that comes from my own learning, through my own thinking.

Reflecting on the voyage allowed me to see this as one of the greatest privileges bestowed upon my young life thus far. As we all know, we are amongst the few in the world who can say they sailed on a ship of luxury, around the ocean, visiting over a dozen countries, while learning, emailing, shopping, touring, partying, sleeping, eating, and changing.

I am the privileged; I accept that and do not apology for it. I do not feel guilty about it. Instead I feel responsible. I feel a responsibility to remember that this voyage is in fact real life and share with everyone that this can be their real life too. I feel responsible to go back home and talk to schools where the students may not even know anyone who has been aboard, let alone traveled around the ocean on a cruise ship. I feel responsible to remember the disparity between Europe and Africa, and South America and stop the miseducation that labels so many countries as underdeveloped when we seen for ourselves that a better label is “exploited countries.” I feel responsible to understand my privilege is not based solely on my hard work or intellect, but more upon the Shoulders on which I Stand. The people who supported, financed, and opened Semester at Sea to me.  The freedom fighters of the past and present who understood that their freedom was my own. My greatest responsibility after this voyage is to commit my life to justice. That regardless of what job I hold or situation I am in, I am an ally to all people and to serving towards a better world.

I know that America has done wrong and on the other hand I know that Semester at Sea as an institution has missed key moments to challenge the status quo. But I know that I love them both and I am pro-America and pro-Semester at Sea. And in my love for them, I still feel a responsibility to fight to improve them and work with others to have them live up to their fullest potential.  I do not have to wait until I am comfortable with money or a job to commit my life to justice because there is no real comfort in me having money while others are starving, there is no real comfort in making a fair wage while some of my food, clothes, and electronics are made by workers with inhumane wages. However, I do not have to run from the privileges I will likely gain as an American, who is a future college graduate, of able mind, and able body but I should use them to empower others. I should and hope to condemn my own indifference and embody the quote from the holocaust survivor Eli Wiesel: “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

My privileges must be used to create a better world not just for the oppressed or marginalized but also for myself and for my future children.

In closing, I am proud of my Semester at Sea experience and humbled by the people who showed me so much love on this ship. I am grateful for the friendships, hard conversations, and the five dance moves I developed and used on every dance floor. My responsibility and commitment to bettering this world is the only way I can reflect on Semester at Sea and embrace the experience. It is the only way I keep from apologizing or feeling guilty about this privilege, it is the only way I continue to live with a connection to my fellow person and a connection to the power of myself.

Thank you to Semester at Sea, thank you to my shipmates, to the crew I am profoundly thankful and to my family I am forever grateful. And thank you all for your time.”