Day 113+14. Libertyville IL USA

25 December. 42°16'59"N, 087°57'11"W. At home.

Merry Christmas.

It’s been 12 days since the MV Explorer pulled into San Diego harbor, and I’m starting to get my land legs back. When I stand still—waiting in line to board an airplane, for example—the room still rolls a little, but the “swells” are getting smaller and will, I’m sure, soon be gone. That’s when I’ll know I’m home.

In addition to the near-record 50-foot walls of water that rolled onto the North Shore of Oahu and held us in Hawaii for a couple of days, I’ve also encountered “The Blizzard of ’09” that hit the East Coast last weekend and shut down everything from Roanoke to Boston, including Haley’s first concert with the Navy Band. Still, we had a nice weekend together, catching up on the final few days of my voyage and her 8 weeks at Navy basic training. I had it far better than she did.

I’ve now been home for almost 5 days, re-acclimating to the Chicago winter and readjusting to the idea that the people I meet in stores or on streets speak the same language and use the same currency that I do. I’ve also begun processing what I’ve experienced over the past 4+ months. I’m sure I’ll continue processing—to use a bit of psychobabble—for a long time to come, perhaps for the rest of my life. But I need to put down a few thoughts while they’re still fresh . . . unprocessed. I suppose this is a fitting way to end the blog.

So here goes: a few thoughts on SAS, the students, and the world.

ISE—the Institute for Shipboard Education—oversees SAS, which truly is a life-changing experience for voyagers: students, faculty, staff, lifelong learners, everybody on the boat. And considering the daunting challenge of owning and operating a 25,000-ton ship, and taking that ship, with 600 to 700 post-pubescent, high-hormonal, mostly affluent students to a dozen-or-so countries over a 15-week period, the people who run the organization do an incredible job.

The University of Virginia adds an academic panache for ISE that, from what I understand, was missing in the previous associations with Pitt, Colorado, and the earlier partners. Semester at Sea had become known as “the booze cruise.” While there’s certainly plenty of boozing that takes place for some students while in port, the ship itself is fairly dry. I don’t know if that’s because of the academic environment UVA has created or because of the more stringent rules that ISE has laid down regarding alcohol use onboard, but whatever the case, the “cruise” part is rather light on the “booze” part these days.

That partnership between UVA and ISE, however, is a peculiar alliance. Virginia is one of the best, most demanding, most selective universities in the country. And its academic standards match its academic standing. Our syllabi had to pass muster with corresponding departments at the university, and many faculty members were asked to add requirements to our syllabi in order to meet Virginia’s stringent standards.

ISE, on the other hand, is a business. While the organization has minimum requirements for admission to SAS—2.75 gpa at an accredited college or university, good “academic and judicial standing,” demonstrated writing skills, etc—its first priority is to fill the boat. The fall ’09 voyage was certainly an economic challenge, with only 550+ of the 700+-student capacity on board. As a result, some students were admitted who, in other years might not have been. One of my students, for example, had just finished high school and won’t enroll at an undergraduate institution until the coming spring semester (ISE calls this a “gap-year” admission). Another had been accepted at an undergraduate institution but had completed only one year of community college. And, based on the writing I saw—and from what I heard from students themselves—many on board hadn’t taken a writing course since early in their high-school years. Clearly, these—and many others—would and do struggle with standards set by a highly selective university.

This tension between maintaining the high standards demanded by UVA and accommodating the academic capabilities of students who didn’t graduate from top-tier high schools, who didn’t score 1500 on the SAT, or who aren’t attending Stanford, Dartmouth, Michigan, or UVA itself—while still challenging the students who are!—is, to my mind, the toughest job of the onboard faculty. I certainly wasn’t always happy with the way I did it.

The students: so much to say, so little space. I mentioned the academic diversity already. The economic diversity was equally broad, perhaps broader.

A significant segment of the students were of a class I referred to as “the Kobe beef of the millennial generation.” These boys and girls, most but not all coming from very affluent families, have been fed the finest food, housed in the finest homes, massaged, curried, pampered, and told “you are the best” until they believe it. Their goal seemed to be to survive the academics while at sea in order to indulge themselves in port.

Some would reboard at each port carting thousands of dollars in goods. (Reputedly, one girl spent $8,000 on clothes alone in Spain.) Several rented villas—villas!—in resort areas along the beaches of Spain, Morocco, and Mauritius. Many went skydiving several times in South Africa and Hawaii at $125 a jump plus another $150 for an accompanying videographer. Many proudly displayed dad’s or mom’s American Express card, joking, “Dad/mom probably won’t be happy when he/she gets the bill next month.” And all went on the most expensive land experiences: camel excursions in the Sahara, luxury safaris in South Africa, flights to see the Taj Mahal and Varanasi in India, 5-day excursions to Beijing and the Great Wall. I’m sure several students had gone through $50,000 or more, including the cost of the voyage itself, by the time they stepped off the ship in San Diego. Like the Kobe beef, they’re overpriced for what you get. One parent’s sign on the dock in San Diego said it all: “Princess.”

A small but noisy segment of the student body—both affluent and not so affluent—hit the closest bar or club almost as soon as Rita announced “the ship is cleared” over the intercom. I’m sure these students saw some sights and participated in some activities that didn’t include alcohol, but to hear them recount their time in port, one would think these experiences were merely brief diversions. At the same time, alcohol sales on board during the 3-hour period each evening when students could buy drinks—maximum of 3 a night—were weak. In fact, the captain shut down alcohol sales on the 7th deck for the final few weeks of the voyage because the slow sales didn’t justify the staffing expense. “Social drinking” isn’t the objective for these kids; it’s binge drinking—drinking to get drunk. When one of my faculty colleagues asked a student why drinking into oblivion is so appealing, the student replied, “We’ve been told over and over that we’ll be the first American generation to live worse than our parents. Why shouldn’t we just go out and get drunk?” Is this the beginning of a new “lost generation”?

Then there were the students who were on scholarship or had scraped and saved—or whose parents had scraped and saved—to put themselves onboard. In most ports, these kids stayed close to the ship, participating in low-cost service visits to schools, villages, orphanages (and having wonderful cross-cultural experiences) but seeing few of the exotic sights their wealthier brethren were enjoying. One girl I had dinner with told me that she rationed herself to one “neat trip” on the voyage (she chose the Great Wall), but, to afford that trip, she stayed in Cape Town, Chennai, and other ports, watching her shipmates return with stash gathered from Marrakech, the Taj, and a Kruger Park safari lodge. There’s no remedy for this inequity, but I suppose there’s a life lesson for students: some are more equal than others.

Finally, the largest segment—at least so I’d like to think—were those who adapted to the dual life demanded by an SAS voyage: student at sea, explorer in port. During days on the ship, I’d see them in the dining-room/study-hall or the piano-bar/study-hall or the small library or computer lab. From what I could tell, they spent these times doing what they’d be doing if they were on their home campuses: studying, discussing coursework with fellow students, or meeting with faculty. Of course, they’d also be internet surfing or Facebook cruising—at least those would who could afford the cost of exceeding their allotted 150 free internet minutes—but for the most part, the ship was exactly what I describe to those who ask: a floating university.

In port, most of these kids would head down the gangplank with a large backpack hanging from their shoulders heading off to independent-travel experiences. They took local busses to Ghana’s Cape Coast, trains to Fez and Marrakech, safaris in South Africa that they had arranged through the internet, overnight train trips in India, a bus to Simitai, China, where they hiked and camped out on the Great Wall. They’d come back to the ship with tales of late trains, missed busses, cross-cultural misunderstandings, and in-transit plan changes, but they all made it back. These are the experiences that most of the students will remember. Not to say that the student/voyagers didn’t also know how to party at the clubs, but partying wasn’t the reason they spent the $25,000-and-more to take the voyage.

I hope that this segment—and they included kids who came from money and those who didn’t—is the most representative of the generation. They certainly represent what a Semester at Sea voyage is supposed to be about.

The world has changed a lot in the 42 years since I boarded a Denver-bound flight in May, 1967, and joined the rest of the Michigan Men’s Glee Club on our 8-week voyage westbound around the world. On that trip, we were departing from and returning to a country that was the envy of the globe. We were the richest, most powerful nation, with a standard of living that, for most other nations’ citizens, was almost unimaginable. That experience was a watershed for all of us and I think gave us—certainly gave me—an appreciation for what we have in the U.S.

Since ’67, I’ve traveled outside the U.S. many times, including a second trip around the world, this one on business in 1998. In these travels, my focus was on the work that I was doing. I saw change in the countries I visited, of course, but most of the time I was distracted by thoughts of the next meeting or the training class I’d just completed. Fall ‘09 was different, and this time I noticed how different the world is from the one I saw in ’67. It’s fair to say that much of the world has caught up with us.

When someone asks me “what was your favorite country?” I say “the United States.” This is still the greatest country. But it’s no longer the only country. Japan is cleaner and more modern—much more modern. China’s wealth is exploding, the Chinese are able to get big things done much more quickly than we are, and their cities offer every consumer good available on U.S. store shelves. The Vietnamese, our former enemies, are friendlier. The Ghanaians, despite their deep poverty and horrible infrastructure, seem happier. I could live in Hong Kong, Cadiz, Cape Town, or Yokohama—especially Yokohama. I wouldn’t have said that about any place we visited in ’67.

I believe all this could be a good thing for the U.S. The more other countries enjoy improving lifestyles, the less likely they are to covet ours. Terrorists hate us because of what we have. The Vietnamese and Chinese, now enjoying a quality of life that compares favorably with ours, at least in the cities, don’t want to destroy us, they want to be like us, economically if not politically. And perhaps the rising economic power of Asia will be just the kick in the butt we need to inspire us to do what we’ve always been able to do: rise higher.

The other thing many of the countries we visited have is a sense of community. That’s certainly true in Vietnam, China, Japan, Ghana, and among the majority Black population of South Africa. They are succeeding because, whether because of their cultures, their government, or both, they are all rowing in the same direction. Meanwhile, we seem to be at each other’s throats, unable to achieve consensus on almost anything. Moreover, we honor those who inflame the differences and disdain those who seem to be trying to bring us together. Continuing on that path is a sure way to becoming a second-class power.

Would I do it again? Sure! But not for a while—a couple of years, at least. And if I do, it’s hard to imagine that the people I share the experience with then could match in quality and congeniality the people—especially the faculty—I shared the past 4 months with. Bob Chapel was right when he told me last summer, “you’ll make new friends you’ll want to keep in close touch with long after December.” He says his greatest strength as a director is casting, and he proved it with the faculty “cast.” As wonderful as are my memories of the ports we visited, the people I shared it with made the voyage.

That’s it. Fin. Happy 2010.