A Whole New World

I keep saying that the song “A Whole New World” from Little Mermaid should be the theme song for this second voyage. It’s been amazing how different things are this second semester as opposed to last semester – mostly all good differences. We have policies, procedures and protocols; we have printers, internet and intranet systems; we have 50% of the staff that have sailed on a ship before and understand the environment; we have an Executive team that is present, involved and not living in bizarro world.

The students are very different too. I wasn’t expecting them to be so different. We have 50 less students which makes the whole community feel different but beyond that, in general, this group feels very different. They seem more laid back, less demanding, and flexible (you TSS folks reading this can stop giggling). It wasn’t that last semester’s group was hard to handle or super high expectation – I think we all lived in crazy world last semester and that impacted the entire community and how we interacted. I also think that last semester’s group was unique. I think it is a unique person who takes the risk on being the first on a brand new, untested adventure such as this one. We had risk takers, strong leaders, strong personalities and change makers. All good things but when you get 200 all together in the same community (plus add staff with similar characteristics) it surely creates some fireworks.

I am feeling pretty good at how things have kicked off. I feel totally supported by our Executive Team and the staff from all departments are in such a different place preparation-wise that we’ve been able to support each other’s departmental efforts and collaborate a lot more.

Now don’t get me wrong there is still a lot of craziness, chaos and frustrations going on but I don’t feel like I am going completely crazy and living in a completely unsupported, surreal, bizarre world (like I did last semester). I think the fact that there are only 3 months left makes it easier to have perspective too. I’m not wishing the experience away by any means, but last semester when things crept into psychotic world the thought of living in that world for 8 months scared the crap out of me. Three months? I can do anything for three months!