It goes fast

I'm sitting at gate C16 at Boston Logan airport right now waiting for my flight home. I have another 90 minutes or so, then it's off to California for two days before making the trip to Hawaii. Once I leave for Honolulu I will no longer have cell phone or internet access. I do intend to keep a journal for the whole month-long voyage from Honolulu to San Francisco and post some excerpts from that when I get back on land. But for the next month or so I will not be posting anything. If you are interested in updates from the Robert C. Seamans, you can find out about our current position at http://sea.edu/voyages/index.asp or look for daily tweets at http://twitter.com/sea_seamans (I loathe twitter but luckily I'm not the one updating it!).

The past four weeks have been amazing. In a very short time I have greatly expanded my field of knowledge into fascinating areas I never thought I would study, challenged myself with exciting field work and research projects, and made an incredible group of friends that I know will only become closer as we all become shipmates in less than a week. Despite the schmooey weather Cape Cod was beautiful, and I am sad to be leaving the quirky little town of Woods Hole. Dean Paul Joyce advised us all when we first arrived, "It goes fast." He was right.

One of the highlights of the experience was the exceptional faculty. We had three professors, each of whom was always passionate and excited about both their subject and their students. Sadly, our Maritime Studies professor, Liz Fisher, told us from the start that she would not be sailing with us because she needed to finish her dissertation this summer. Monday we tried to take this into our own hands. In Liz's lecture on pirates that morning we learned about the means for pirate crews to address grievances on their ships—the Round Robin. Rather than drawing up a standard linear petition, the crew would sign their names in a circle around the statement so as to disguise who signed first and ensure that the message was coming from the people as a whole. That afternoon we decided to adopt this strategy, and we drew up a Round Robin requesting the presence of Liz Fisher on our cruise, signed by the whole class.

Liz had joked that morning that she had thought about talking to her boss about coming with us, so we presented our petition to Paul. He said he would absolutely support her coming, and that SEA would even buy the plane ticket. So we took our petition to Liz herself, and told her that we didn't want to pressure her if it would jeopardize the work she needed to do, but we wanted her to know that the whole class would love to have her come with us.

At our final meeting this morning President Bullard told us that the unprecedented act of a class presenting a grievance in a historically accurate manner had brought the matter to the attention of the highest level. We were given no confirmation one way or the other, but we all have our fingers crossed to see Liz in Hawaii.

The duties I am about to embark on include setting and striking sail, deploying science equipment and analyzing samples collected, navigating across the Pacific by celestial navigation, serving as assistant in the galley and engine room, and being as helpful and encouraging a shipmate as I can be. The experience is guaranteed to be unforgettable. I am ridiculously excited to get on the ship.