Back! From week-long hibernation.

During the WLC (World Leadership Conference) there was a recurring conversation:

FRIEND: Are you planning to go to a university in singapore?
ME: No not really. *mumbles something about expanding horizons*
FRIEND: So where would you like to go to university?
ME: Um. The UK?
FRIEND: Any particular universities in mind?
ME: Um mm uh Melbourne Uni if I can get the scholarship?
[Yes, melb is kind of not in the UK but I've said that New South Wales was in WALES, so you understand my aptitude in geography.]
FRIEND: Oh okay.

So friends! Naturally I embark on a quest to find The University.
A vietnamese friend who went to the conference goes to Wesleyan University, so I google it, and do the campus tour and all that jazz. To find out about what other people thought about it, I tried collegeboard.com, and then I see this amazing academic program called Semester at Sea. So I google that, and I found this!

SEA Semester is this exciting program in Woods Hole, MA. You get to earn 17 college credits while spending a semester of college there, plus actually sail and learn to man[?] a working ship. You spend a few weeks on shore first, attending classes, and then about 3 weeks at sea carrying out an independent research project. When I first read it I was like [!!!] I would kill to be able to earn academic credits while doing fieldwork and learning about conservation, sustainability, genetic anthropology and the like.

It sounds a lot like what I did in wales-- fieldwork, testing your own hypotheses, understanding the significance of the tests you're conducting, getting to be up close with intertidal organisms etc. There is a large variety of programs they're offering:

"Ocean Exploration takes an interdisciplinary approach that combines data and insights from oceanography, the humanities and social sciences, and public policy – together with practical skills in nautical science – so students can develop a broad understanding of the sea."
You take courses like Oceanography, Nautical Science and Maritime Studies.

Aaand in Maritime Studies you get to do Maritime Literature, which I hope is what the kid says in the video about NOVELS about sailing like The Old Man and the Sea, because then I would squee! It's like... studying The Great Gatsby before going to NYC or doing something like Wuthering Heights or Rebbecca or even Brideshead Revisited before visiting an English estate complete with country and moors and things. Ahh omg I can't imagine earning credits for this.

and then there's "SEA Semester: Oceans and Climate provides an unequaled opportunity for undergraduate science students to study the place of the oceans in one of the pivotal scientific questions of our time – global climate change."

If I want to do this I have to do a science major, but I shouldn't base my decision on SEA Semester because I might not even get in (25 people per program; there are only so many people that can fit on a sailing ship) but still! It's a good reason, right, to do a science major? Ach the non-science majors I would take might be political science or sociology, but sometimes when I choose my major I think: I would like to be able to take philo classes along with ecology and environmental studies; there is so much that I do not know o_o but that's for another blog post.

Anyway in SEA Semester: Oceans and Climate there's a Oceanographic Research Techniques course which means I'll get to do fieldwork!! :D And look at plankton samples and intertidal organisms... there's a wide range, with [acoustic measurements of water flow] as one of the research options, which is very physics. Exciting exciting

When you look at the pictures, also, the ships they're sailing are REAL ships, with sails and masts and everything. Not like lame cruise ships/ yachts with no sails. The sails are so Dawn Treader, right? Go go look at the pictures. There's a part where Lucy leans off the bowspirit and looks at the merpeople and sometimes Reepicheep goes up to the crow's nests and the rain will fall on deck like a real STORM, just like in Dawn Treader! If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's just a lot like Pirates of the Caribbean.

eee it would be lovely to go. Really exciting. And there is TRAVEL involved! And managing on your own! And no cellphone signals or internet in the middle of the OCEAN. (Onboard computers are only for research purposes) You're just left alone to do your research and work and let the sea inspire you. Talk about isolation! :D The ship also docks at places like Bahamas, Cuba, and Jamaica, and you get to go onshore to visit.

Has anyone read Troubling a Star by Madeline L'engle? It sounds A LOT like that, with the lectures and sense of community.