Class Afloat Live!
Q & A
For the biweekly period from December 20, 1999
Do you ever wish you had a more conventional classroom?
...Lorraine, Massachusetts, USA
by Glynis Price, Lauren Bruner, Rob Crooks, Catherine Mackie
For the most part, no way. We would not give this chance up for the world. There are, however, some bad parts to class on a ship. The benches are really uncomfortable and there is very little legroom. Wall space for resting backs is in high demand and fought over. There is only one temperature in the classroom and the mess—VERY hot. It is hard to do homework because there is a limited amount of table space.When the waves are big, all of our stuff ends up flying across the room, and even teachers have been known to fly across the room! When reading, the waves can make people queasy. It is worse than trying to read in a moving vehicle.
We get distracted during class by animals, land sightings, people on daywatch making faces at us through the portholes, and, of course, discussions about past ports, future ports, and interesting things that have occurred at sea. However, we would never want to give this up for a conventional classroom. The problems simply add to the fun of our experience.
