Student Profile: Katelyn

We are at sea today, it is our third class/sea day since leaving Hong Kong. Around noon tomorrow we will arrive in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam. It is the first port since Ensenada, Mexico on our itinerary that will be completely new to me, and I am really looking forward to it. It will also be our first overnight trip organized by Semester at Sea--starting on Wednesday, we will be on a homestay in the Mekong Delta area. Apparently, much of Saigon is very quiet right now because everyone is home visiting with family for the Chinese New Year, called Tet in Vietnam, so getting out of the city for a couple of days is what is recommended. 

In the library, we are answering a fair number of research questions. I am getting pretty good at limiting databases to geographical areas, and at having long conversations with students as we wait for the search results to load. I am quickly realizing how much of our searching at home is trial and error--the stakes are higher when one poorly chosen click can create four or five minutes of waiting for no results.

Today's student profile is about Katelyn. From Grand Prairie, Texas, she attends Trinity University in San Antonio. She is a junior double majoring in history and religion, but actually has two years left to the completion of her combined graduate education program. When she is done with all of that schooling, Katelyn plans to teach either middle school or high school. 

Her favorite part of Semester at Sea so far is making new friends on the ship, then getting to travel with them and have experiences none of her friends have had before. She finds that getting lost is one of the best ways to travel, and actually enjoyed being lost in Shanghai for several hours until her group of friends finally ended up at the Shanghai Museum.

Her least favorite part of they voyage so far has been the challenge in keeping up with all of her coursework, especially since she is taking 15 hours (the maximum allowed) and there are always so many other things to do on board the ship and in ports. Budgeting time is hard. 

Katelyn is one of our quieter students in the library, but she is a great worker who is always on time. She is currently finishing up a project to redo signage for the stacks after helping shift books to make more room in the reference shelves.

I took the photo below on the very first day students came aboard. When Katelyn looked at the photo yesterday, she said it felt like a long time ago! Thanks, Katelyn, for being interviewed.