By our second day, the ship had cleared the dense cover of the coast, making for a particularly fresh back to school morning.  Cruise classes begin with no time to spare because while sixty days may be a long time to be at sea, the general consensus is that it is a quick semester.   

[0630 on the Bridge, near the end of the early watch]

Four levels below the main deck, instructor Robbie Jackson had engineering cadets on their feet at 08:05, puzzling over an oil purifier in the classroom lab.  The training lab is one of the biggest open spaces on the Bear, full of reasonably practical machinery, and the cadets got busy dismantling Jackson’s purifier right away. Jackson clearly harbors a deep respect for fuel purification and was not shy about waxing reverent on the elegance of the operating slide apparatus in particular.  One of the major contaminants is water and the purifiers use a simple spinning action to separate it from the oil.  “Fuel has just gotten dirtier with time,” Jackson told the class, trying to emphasize the significance of the lesson, which had made a mess of the lab.  “I have great admiration for the designer of this unit.”  The plan was to reassemble the unit after lunch. 

One deck up, Cal Poly students began their four-unit Physical Science 320 course with a few words on energy consumption from Professor Keith Stowe.  Stowe is wiry with a fervent teaching style and feels that the two biggest problems facing fossil fuels are limited availability and negative environmental consequences, but he encouraged his students to think on their own.  On any given cruise, the Golden Bear hosts a number of students and professors from Cal Poly, who become part of the crew and operate their own classes, such as this one.  “It was pretty much the same as a normal class,” explained Kevin Flanagan, who has never been to sea, “except with rocking.”  By the time the class meets tomorrow, the Bear will have burned about 16,000 more gallons of (purified) fuel. 

Elsewhere around this ship, Scott Green’s Practical Training 1 course for sophomore engineers was visible only through a hole in room 3-96-0.  After lunch, they resurfaced on deck to have few words about fire control, which sounded like a reasonable topic to cover on the first day.  Green seemed happy enough about they way things were going. 

After some technical difficulties, Kris Rana’s International Business course finally got underway with a discussion on outsourcing.   One of his Global Studies students felt that the practice should be regulated and Rana cautiously agreed, promising more on international markets and their effects on globalization the next day. 

[Global Studies students]

[Practical Training I for engineers]