Friday, June 30, 2006
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June 30: We are currently 2300 miles W of Honolulu, 1235 miles SE of Tokyo. I was invited to the Captain's Dinner last night, an elegant affair with superior food; interesting guy (Jeremy Kingston, from Ascot, England, currently living in the Philippines). It lasted for several hours, quite lively.
Today I made it my mission to check out the various offices and business spaces on the ship. There is an excellent hospital down on deck 2, well equipped and ready for most medical situations, staffed by a doctor and a nurse practitioner.
A faculty meeting (grappling with the eternal problem of the Global Studies course) led to dinner and an extremely animated conversation about the arts and arts funding in the US compared with other countries.
The food is surprisingly good, and the students seem to like it (many said it was much better than the food in their home institutions). There is always fresh salad, lots of vegetables and vegetarian possibilities, a fish dish, a meat dish, pasta, potatoes and rice (if you're on a non-carb diet, forget it!). Plus juices, iced tea, and desserts.
Tonight's "Community College" presentation was by one of the senior passengers, a guy who served in Vietnam in 1968-1969; he did a powerpoint on his experiences there at Cameron Bay, and expressed his deep interest in seeing what Vietnam looked like today, nearly 40 years later.
A faculty-student mixer followed. The students are genuinely excited about all of this, extremely complimentary of their teachers (several, in particular, have impressive credentials and an engaging teaching style), and not daunted by the reading, even after UVa demanded that many of the syllabi be pumped up with more reading. There are whiners, to be sure, students who simply want to party and "have a good time," but the overwhelming majority of the students are serious about this adventure, taking their classes seriously, and performing no better and no worse than they do at home. This has been a surprise to me, particularly given some of the criticisms we have all heard about Semester at Sea. On the whole, these are very good students.
June 30: We are currently 2300 miles W of Honolulu, 1235 miles SE of Tokyo. I was invited to the Captain's Dinner last night, an elegant affair with superior food; interesting guy (Jeremy Kingston, from Ascot, England, currently living in the Philippines). It lasted for several hours, quite lively.
Today I made it my mission to check out the various offices and business spaces on the ship. There is an excellent hospital down on deck 2, well equipped and ready for most medical situations, staffed by a doctor and a nurse practitioner.A faculty meeting (grappling with the eternal problem of the Global Studies course) led to dinner and an extremely animated conversation about the arts and arts funding in the US compared with other countries.
The food is surprisingly good, and the students seem to like it (many said it was much better than the food in their home institutions). There is always fresh salad, lots of vegetables and vegetarian possibilities, a fish dish, a meat dish, pasta, potatoes and rice (if you're on a non-carb diet, forget it!). Plus juices, iced tea, and desserts.
Tonight's "Community College" presentation was by one of the senior passengers, a guy who served in Vietnam in 1968-1969; he did a powerpoint on his experiences there at Cameron Bay, and expressed his deep interest in seeing what Vietnam looked like today, nearly 40 years later.A faculty-student mixer followed. The students are genuinely excited about all of this, extremely complimentary of their teachers (several, in particular, have impressive credentials and an engaging teaching style), and not daunted by the reading, even after UVa demanded that many of the syllabi be pumped up with more reading. There are whiners, to be sure, students who simply want to party and "have a good time," but the overwhelming majority of the students are serious about this adventure, taking their classes seriously, and performing no better and no worse than they do at home. This has been a surprise to me, particularly given some of the criticisms we have all heard about Semester at Sea. On the whole, these are very good students.
# posted by Admiral David @ 12:31 PM 
