The Truth About Semester at Sea

Let me tell you the truth about Semester at Sea; it is about time someone clears the air anyway.

I know you’ve heard it, the whole study abroad schpeil. 

You know, the one where people talk all about how much they changed in their time abroad? I know, we’ve all heard the stories of how great their time was on that ship or laying on the beach in Australia or in Italy, walking the streets with wine in one hand and bread in the other.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been there, done that, I’ve said those words (plenty of times, trust me).

But why doesn’t anyone talk about WHY they changed or HOW they’ve changed?

I know we’re all thinking it: you look the same and act almost the same; the only real difference is in your food taste (guilty). Or at least that’s what everyone says.

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For you, though, your world has been rocked and it seems like nobody wants to acknowledge the truth about it. 

But if you look a little deeper, you’ll see it. If you ask the right questions, you’ll find the difference.

So here she is, the truth about SAS, at least for me: it was hard. No listen, it was really hard. And believe me when I tell you it will be hard for you too, all the good things in life are.

The beginning is hard. It’s like starting your freshman year of high school or college all over again (x10)… you can just tell this was the first day:

There will be times you don’t think you’re cut out for this whole ‘once in a lifetime experience’ thing. And times you’re scared because everything is unfamiliar and you don’t know what’s coming next.

There will be times you feel out of place and just want to go home. Maybe, there will be times you even feel like you made a mistake. 

There will be times that you just think, “I can’t do this anymore.”

But then that change comes, slowly but surely, and with out a second thought. 

And then the hard part isn’t the unfamiliarity, its the familiarity. You’ll wish back all those moments you really missed home because it would mean you have that many more seconds back on the ship.

You’ll realize that the tears you shed when you missed home, will also be shed when you leave your new home—your home away from home. You’ll realize that leaving home the second time was a lot harder than the first. 

You’ll look back and realize you did hard things every.single.day. 

Things like navigating the streets of India, attempting to ride the Japanese trains, or visiting a nunnery.

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Or saying yes to something that scares you, like jumping off a bridge or out of a plane (although, sorry to say, scary wasn’t my choice of words for these). 

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You’ll see that you learned how to communicate with the beautiful people you met in every city you arrived in. And build relationships with the bat of an eyelash.

You learned that some days you feel like this…

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And some days you feel like this…

You learned how to travel anywhere (anyway) on no sleep, but with a mile-wide grin.

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You saw things that made your heart want to burst one minute but break the next.

You hiked and hiked (and hiked) to find the most beautiful places you’ve ever seen.

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You learned they were right about the shipboard community and the fact that you would meet some of your life long friends. And the most fun people in the world to travel with.

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You learned more about yourself in 4 months than most people do in a lifetime. 

You’ll do things, say things, try things, and see things you would never have imagined. 

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But not a single one of those things was easy, at least not initially. 

You see, each one of those things can be intimidating initially, maybe even scary. But little by little, you figured it out and the initially scary thing becomes second nature. 

The things that were hard at first stop being so hard because the hard things shaped you, stretched you, and grew you in ways you didn’t know you could.  

All of that is why you signed up, maybe without even knowing. It’s why you said yes.

All of that is why you went through hours of paperwork, annoying essays, and got all those shots.

Why you went through all those headaches to make sure your passport and visa came in time. 

And why you spent days leading up to your trip packing, repacking, and went on last-minute trips to the store.

And spent hours researching where you were going to go. 

You did all of that because, despite all of the hard, you knew more good would come out of it. 

So yes, the truth about SAS is that it is hard, but that is what we signed up for. And who said hard was a bad thing anyway?

I don’t know about you, but I’ll take the hard things in life every single day if it means I get to learn even a fraction of what I did on SAS.

Because trust me, you will miss all of this.

Til next time,

Katelyn