Prospective cruise students,

As far as I know, every person on my cruise agreed that nothing about his or her choice to participate in Cal Poly at Sea was regrettable. I participated in the 2005 South Pacific cruise and enjoyed the entire experience. I realize that there are many considerations to be made in deciding to spend two months on a ship, but I found this opportunity to be worth nearly any consequence. I am a computer engineering major (the only one on my cruise, as far as I know) and rearranging my class schedule to accommodate Cal Poly at Sea was certainly somewhat of a challenge. Since very few of the courses offered on cruise would advance me towards graduation, I simply chose to take the classes that were most interesting to me. If you have a wide range of interests, choosing courses for cruise should not be difficult. I took environmental chemistry, comparative world history, and astronomy (12 units total) and found the course material to be somewhat specific to the experience of being at se on a ship, or to the ports we visited. I would definitely recommend taking no more than 12 units. It is not too difficult to take more than 12 units but most students on my cruise agreed that taking more units makes it tougher to participate in many of the activities on the ship, especially if you are really aiming for good grades. While I was on cruise people would fish, play guitar, watch movies, play games, share photographs and videos, work out in the gym, do yoga, suntan on the helo deck, and more. Along with studying, these activities kept us busy.

Ports were pretty incredible - I was never bored and I wanted to spend more time in each one. I certainly would recommend getting out of the port cities for at least one day on each of your visits. We rented cars and took taxi cabs, water taxies, trains, and shuttle busses to get to national parks and smaller cities. There is some cost associated with this extra transportation, but it allows you to get a more complete impression of the country you are visiting. Also, there were many people who decided to spend every night in bars and nightclubs while in port. Several people would spend a lot of their day drinking too, partly because the drinking age was much lower in every port we visited except Hawaii. I would recommend against spending too much time in nightclubs and bars. We had a lot of fun in nightclubs, but just make sure to experience everything you can before you waste too much time in one. Often a large group of cadets would all go to the same bar and CMA and Cal Poly students would be the only people there. I made an effort to spend time meeting people of the country because I wanted to have the full experience.

If you have diving or surfing equipment, I would recommend bringing one or the other. It was difficult to transport lots of things back to California on the chartered plane from Hawaii and you might have to leave your surfboard on the ship for later pickup. there were many opportunities to go diving and snorkeling, so I got plenty of use out of my SCUBA equipment. We saw sharks, turtles, rays, eels, octopus, and lots of fish, so it was definitely worth bringing my gear. Other than that, pack light because it will make transporting and storing things much easier.

If you have any interest in traveling outside the US and if you have a wide range of interests, the Cal Poly at Sea trip is definitely for you. You will get to know almost every Cal Poly student on the ship, and many of the CMA cadets and officers. Living on the ship is not too difficult in terms of the limited space, but if you are use to having some personal space I would recommend choosing a stateroom instead of lower berthing. If you would like to get out of the country and have many new experiences, you will not be disappointed with the Cal Poly at Sea program.