Day 14 - At Sea

My day started early as I sit in on Liberty and Law at 8:00 am. After a quick breakfast, Nick and I listened to Bob lay some knowledge on us. The class has less participation than I would have hoped, and the lectures can be slow, but Bob is incredibly knowledgeable. So far, it seems I’ll find myself wondering “where the hell is he going with this?” with 20 minutes or so left in class, and then he’ll proceed to wrap it up beautifully. Today, Bob explained Madison’s radical idea behind changing from the Articles of the Confederation, which gave ultimate authority to state liberty, to the Constitution, which gave the federal government power over the states. During the Articles of the Confederation, Bob explained that congress was analogous to today’s UN: the sovereign states simply could ignore requests. The entire lecture will take too long to write out, so I’ll simply say I learned more cool stuff.

Next I had Global Studies, which unfortunately was a total timewaster. All we did was go over syllabus and project information, the entirety of which was covered on the first day of class.

Then I had a short break before grabbing lunch and heading to Digital Storytelling. Today we were each supposed to share a story, so I told the class about the whole Hawaiian Cruiser fiasco. Erika, the professor, gave us a lot of solid advice on how to tell stories, such as the rule of three (use examples in multiples of three) and different tools to build suspense. I look forward to continuing to learn from her.

After Digital Storytelling I had Drawing, and we worked with charcoal. I freaking HATE charcoal. Not only does it get everywhere, but I seem to constantly inadvertently erase what I’ve drawn by putting my arm on the page. F you charcoal. I hope you die a slow and painful death.

I then sped off to Gamelan, where we continued to practice our first song. I came a bit late because I mixed up what time it starts, and by the time I arrived people were already playing. I’m sorry to say that it sounded terrible. Hopefully we will improve, because, honestly, we are currently awful.

After Gamelan, Tolan and I went off to try to write our first song. Last night I thought of a really funny theme: “If I had one day.” The perspective of the singer (us) is that he has one day to live, and is singing a song to his girlfriend as to what he would do with her that last day. It starts sweet, with the opening line “If I had one day, I’d wake up by your side” and eventually moves to the offensive “If I had one day, I’d tell you honestly which dresses make your ass look big. The blue one makes it look like a moon.” If you’ve got any good ideas for jokes, email me at msrattner@semesteratsea.net.

After band practice (I can say that now!!), I ate dinner and am now blogging. So I suppose that was my day. I’m going to work on my summer research application now. Tomorrow we start to plan Japan. Keep it real, internet.