Story Photos
 Laura Wells of Longview, a junior at George Fox College in Portland, spent fall semester traveling the world and earning college credit on board a ship-based program called Semester at Sea. Photo courtesy of Laura Wells
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Longview native gains new perspective through Semester at Sea
Monday, January 21, 2008 5:45 AM PST
By Cathy Zimmerman
Printable version
E-mail this articleLaura Wells spent the first half of her junior year in college walking the Great Wall of China, dodging motorbikes in Saigon and touring Hiroshima.
Everything was meaningful, Wells said. But it was trudging through the cold trying to find a park north of Dubrovnik and getting lost in Granada after midnight that provided the most lasting lessons.
"We were talking about how you loosen up when you travel without plans," said Wells, 20, who took a leave from George Fox College in Portland to spend a Semester at Sea, taking classes on a cruise ship that docked in nine countries last fall.
"Wandering around is part of the experience," she said. "We drove around Egypt for two days, talking to our cab driver. We learned a lot that way."
Wells, who graduated from Mark Morris High School in 2005, enrolled last summer in Semester at Sea, a program operated out of the University of Virginia. She earned 12 credits, changed her major and came down with a serious case of wanderlust.
"It was the best three and half months of my life," Wells said.
Semester at Sea started in 1963 and is run by the non-profit Institute for Shipboard Education. In 45 years there have been three sponsors, the newest one being the University of Virginia, which enlists professors from various universities to teach and travel with the 600-700 college students who sign up for fall, spring or summer semesters. (On Wells's trip, girls outnumbered guys two to one.)
Students can choose from about 75 courses, designed to flesh out the culture, history and politics of their ports of call. They live and study on the MV Explorer, built in Germany and reportedly the fastest passenger ship of its kind in the world.
George Fox allowed Wells to take a leave, she said, and she was able to transfer her credits when she got back.
A semester on the high seas comes with a high price tag, Wells discovered.
The total cost was more than $19,000, which she managed with funds from parents and grandparents, her "entire savings," a couple of garage sales. and money she earned working two jobs last summer, she said.
A semester's tuition, room and board at the private George Fox is about $16,000, Wells said, but the shipboard semester added the value of well-organized worldwide travel and school work that applied experience to theory.
Classes were "a little easier" than the ones at her college, Wells said.
Most based 20 percent of the grade on field experience and included writing assignments, introductory sessions before they reached each port of call and speakers who boarded from the countries being visited.
"In one class, we wrote a paper on Hiroshima before we got there, and then we had to write a paper after we had been there, seen the sites and visited the museum."
Onboard food was nothing to write home about, Wells said, but it was adequate.
"The ship was a lot funner than I thought it would be," she said. "We had a Halloween dance and an Ambassadors Ball. We played games, and we sat on deck to study and watch the sunsets. The sunsets were amazing. And we saw whales and dolphins."
Wells found a group of friends to hang with on the three- to five-day junkets in the countries they visited. "Most of us would get up at 5 in the morning so we could watch the ship pull into the countries, Seeing it that way is different from flying in."
She especially appreciated the journey up the Mekong Delta to Ho Chi Minh City, Wells said. Coming into India "was the first time I really realized what I was doing - I was going around the world."
India also provided a home stay with a family who spoke English, she said. "We looked at their family albums, and talked a lot. We could really learn about them."
Her favorite food included home-cooked meals in India and a pretzel-type bread with cheese in it in Turkey, "In Egypt, they had a bread like pita bread, and the hummus was really good. It was served everywhere."
Wells said she'd "definitely" recommend Semester at Sea to others. Her biggest lesson may have been the pleasure of travel itself. "I want to minor in international Studies now. And I will do more traveling."
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