Study abroad not needed to have a wake up call

I long ago swore to never write a column about Semester at Sea, just because I felt that it… I long ago swore to never write a column about Semester at Sea, just because I felt that it had been done. Everyone has heard the testimony and nobody cares – “can’t go back to being the same,” “learned more in three months than three years of college,” et al.

But what nobody seems to talk about much is what it’s like to be back. And I don’t mean that initial return where “nobody understands” and the world doesn’t fit anymore. I mean down the line, six or seven months later, when you are expected to have moved on with your life.

Because, like a freshman dividing his time between instant messaging and calling his high school loveboat, former SASers don’t just move on. They might go out and smile and laugh and party all the same, but in the back of their minds, they are thinking the same thing that Johnny Freshman does when he finally stumbles home with someone different on Friday night: “This doesn’t feel right. I know what real life feels like. And this ain’t it.”

I can see it in everyone’s eyes. Though Semester at Sea carries students from all around the country, the greatest portion – around 80 percent – traditionally hails from Pitt’s campus. At any given minute while walking around campus, an SAS alumnus is bound to run into a fellow shipmate who he never before encountered on the voyage. We’re like members of some bizarre fraternity, recognizable only by our Ho Chi Minh T-shirts. Like the cult members of the “Fight Club” secret society, we greet each other with grudging nods and knowing gazes of discontent at our present location.

SAS truly is the best school in the world, a statement I will stand by despite the fact that you can only attend it for a semester and almost nobody fails out. I don’t think this school’s quality can be judged by the usual criteria. Semester at Sea is a learner’s paradise – you’re so overwhelmed with sensory stimuli that there’s no time to process the fact that you have discovered so much more than you ever dreamed you could possibly be compelled to care about.

The last days of the voyage are always hopeful ones, with everyone vowing to return home and change their ways of life. This is easy to articulate and hard to live. Because inevitably, days only have 24 hours and eventually one has to lie down and consider just whether or not they are living differently. I contend that I am, yet there is a whole lot more that I could be doing.

This is a matter that applies not just to SASers, but to all students who study abroad, which is a significant number at Pitt. The trend seems to be that while studying abroad, most students really do live to the fullest, staying out late the nights before tests, making friends with all kinds of different personality types, not hesitating to attempt something at which they are completely inept. This is why people almost always cite their time abroad as their best experience of college.

What I wonder is, why don’t we bring this same attitude to our home campuses? We might never again get to return to the places we study, which is a typical reason why students act with such wild abandonment – but then, when are we ever going to be undergrads at Pitt again? Our time in college is just as fleeting and ephemeral, if not more. After all, one has the rest of his life to figure out cheap ways to travel again. The streets of Paris or Ghana might be more exciting than Oakland – but that’s probably because you alternate a well-worn path between the library and frat hill.

So, I urge you to study abroad in Oakland when you can’t get the money or resources together to head elsewhere. Kill hours between class at the Carnegie Museum. Make sure that you’ve made it to the top of the Cathedral and Mt. Washington by the time you throw your cap in the air at graduation. Make friends with students studying abroad here and show them around. Try eating at India Garden – or make your friends try it. Stay out late and cram two hours before the test. Blow off homework in favor of the books you really want to learn from. Things will work out.

We had a motto on the MV Explorer: You can sleep when you get home. Well, I think we should all have recuperated by now. It’s time to wake up again.

E-mail landlubber Daron Christopher at djc14@pitt.edu.