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‘Semester at Sea’ is Life-Altering Experience for City Tech Student
Olga Munoz, bottom right, with the children of a Dalit (Untouchable) village in India.
Olga Munoz is not one to take her involvement in things lightly or to waste time. One of the first students inducted last year into the new City Tech chapter of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars, she quickly took advantage of the society’s member resources, including its comprehensive website listing of study abroad opportunities. A program called “Semester at Sea” was one she found especially attractive. She completed an online application for the program in April 2004 and was accepted in May.
“A four-month educational trip aboard the world’s fastest cruise ship is pretty expensive,” Munoz says, “and I come from a family of modest means. At first, affording the trip seemed out of my league. But where there’s a will, there’s a way, and I couldn’t allow this opportunity to become one of those things in life I wanted to do and never did. There are so many resources for students such as scholarships, loans, grants and work-study options, and I put in the effort required to raise the money I needed. It was well worth it, though, because the return-on-investment was amazing!”
Munoz’ major is hospitality management and she aspires to one day own and operate her own chain of hotels and restaurants. There are two more qualities this 21-year-old native New Yorker and Flushing/Queens resident isn’t short on -- aspiration and ambition.
While her City Tech professors were not fully familiar with the “Semester at Sea” program, they provided Munoz with all of the guidance and counseling she needed once her participation in the fall 2004 cruise was assured. “The hospitality management department is like a family,” she says, “one that has always provided whatever support I needed to successfully pursue new ideas and interests.”
A career in hospitality involves dealing with people from all over the world, and for a student aspiring to serve an international clientele, knowing as much as possible about them is a must. That’s one reason why the “Semester at Sea” program’s educational focus on “globalization” was especially appealing to Munoz.
“We set sail in late August from Vancouver, Canada, on a world cruise that took 700 students from universities all over the world to 10 different countries from Japan, China and India to South Africa, Brazil and Venezuela,” says Munoz. “When our journey ended in Ft. Lauderdale in December, we had toured Hiroshima, visited China’s Forbidden City and climbed the Great Wall. We had visited the Mekong Delta and the Cuchi Tunnels in Vietnam.
"Almost everywhere we went, we were involved in a service project. In India, 30 of us spent a night helping out in a Dalit (Untouchable) village, where people from the lowest rung of that country's caste system live. Most have no running water, little food and next to no real healthcare. In these villages, people are dying every day of malaria, dengue fever, AIDS and other afflictions. I never realized how much I take my own life for granted until I saw first-hand how these people live. Three or four families spend their entire lives together along with their animals in a barren hut smaller that the smallest City Tech classroom. I felt a knot in my throat and tears ran down my cheeks at the realization that for these people my life is a dream. Later, in the South African Townships, where we helped build houses, we saw how the aftereffects of Apartheid still affect the masses so long after its abolition.”
While at sea, Munoz and her classmates took classes seven days a week, earning 12 credits in the process. The curriculum was all encompassing and nearly all majors were represented. Crash language courses were provided before the students visited each country, and a course in “Global Studies” was a requirement for all. Before reaching each new country, students their own age from that country joined the cruise and served as their guides.
What was the “return-on-investment” for Olga Munoz? She’ll tell you that her semester at sea was a life-changing experience. “I now think differently about the world, and so many things that once affected me don’t phase me like they used to. I know that the way I lived my life before just isn’t enough for me anymore. There are so many people in this world who need help, and I’m going to find ways to help them.”
Now back on campus at City Tech, her message to other students is simple and straightforward: “It's important to do what seems right in the deepest part of yourself, and there’s no limit to what you can do, if you set your mind to it. It’s like what the late Joseph Campbell once said was the source of personal peace in the PBS series ‘The Power of Myth’ -- each one of us has to find our bliss and then follow it.”
3/4/05
