“I forgot my camera.” As I reached into my bag as we landed in Freeport, Bahamas, this cruel realization was the first thought that came into my mind. I had forgotten my brand new camera, which I had not only purchased with Semester at Sea in mind, but I had even cut off a little out of my semester’s budget for the purpose of recording my trip. And yet, I had forgotten it.
At our first pre-port meeting, Dean Gaither, the executive dean for the Summer 2012 voyage, advised us all to “look through your eyes before your lens.” Little did I know that this would contribute to one of the greatest lessons I would learn from Semester at Sea: the importance of living in the moment. This did not just come from the inability to take pictures with my own camera, but rather my separation from technology as a whole.
I had never realized how truly unnecessary my attachment to technology was until I was forced to live without it. I was not posing at every corner, giving my attention to my camera’s lens without even knowing what I was posing with. Instead, I was observing the world around me. I did not walk down the streets of a country with my eyes glued to a phone screen. Instead, I was actively engaged with each country’s culture. I did not truly understand all of this until I reached the sand dunes of the Sahara. I do not believe there was a single moment while in the desert that I would have wanted to take my eyes off of my surroundings to focus on my camera or any other technology. I was not concerned with looking good in a picture or even posing for one. It was not about who I needed to text or some preoccupation with trying to record my presence instead of actually being present. It was about fully immersing myself in the place I was in.
As I journeyed out into different parts of the world, Semester at Sea pushed me out of my technological comfort sphere. At first, this was jarring and I was not sure how to react. However, because of this separation from technology, my experience became my own, not Facebook’s. The world was observed by me, not my camera. Semester at Sea taught me many things and widened my perspective in ways I cannot begin to explain. Even though we were constantly prepared for culture shocks in different countries, I was not ready for the shock to my own culture’s dependence on technology once I got back. During my voyage, I learned to distinguish observing from seeing, listening from hearing, and actually being somewhere versus drifting through a place while immersed in technology. Above all else, I learned to be present.
