Having just completed Chesapeake Semester this fall, I can safely say that that was an experience I will cherish and always look back on in awe now knowing how special it was. I am so grateful it turned out that way too as Chesapeake Semester was a main selling point as to why I chose to come to Washington College in the first place. The big thing that sets the program apart from typical schooling is its commitment to teaching about our beloved local body of water, the Chesapeake Bay, in an interdisciplinary fashion through experiential learning opportunities. This meant having class time for a week or two and then going out and talking to field experts about what we learned while being in places significant to the topics discussed such as cattle farms, museums, Smith Island, and even Belize!
 

Through this program me and eleven other students were able to gain a whole new appreciation for the Chesapeake Bay as we examined it from nearly every academic lens I can think of. Getting to immerse ourselves in the rich culture of the Bay by talking to people who live and breathe it, like the watermen, early on really helped me open my mind to how intertwined all the aspects of the Bay could be. One of our classes would be discussing the Indigenous roots of Maryland and how they lived in sync with the Bay while another would discuss on a more scientific level of what the Bay used to be like and why it has changed from what those Native Americans experienced. Then, the next day we would be looking at artworks showcasing portrayals of both the Bay and Indigenous people of the area and learning how to understand what message these paintings were trying to get across at the time. No matter what subject we were supposed to be learning there was always overlap, which is always something that I had been told would happen in a major like Environmental Science because it is inherently interdisciplinary, but I was never quite able to understand that until I saw it unfolding right in front of me. 

Not only did Chesapeake Semester give me extensive knowledge of the Bay in pretty much any context, but it also gave me a family of people who I know I can rely on regardless of our program's semester coming to a close. Starting off as a group of relatively twelve strangers who got thrown into a week of "team bonding" and then get carted around in the same transit van across Maryland every few weeks does something to a group. Especially when you are cooking meals, journaling and creating art, pitching tents, freezing in farm fields, doing assignments, living in an Airbnb on a remote island, and exploring coral reefs all together you are bound to get attached. Going through so much constant change and starting to get familiar with "being comfortable being uncomfortable" (a famous Ches Sem saying) made us grow both as individuals and as a group. Not only did I have all the support in the world from my peers when things got a bit too overwhelming, but I also had the support of my amazing professors who we spent almost as much time with. It truly is the people who make the program and there is no other group that I would rather have started off with struggling to remember the names of during the hundreds of ice breakers we did and end up laying under the stars on a dock in Belize reminiscing about how far we had come.

Now having completed Chesapeake Semester and getting to explore such a unique location as the Bay so deeply I can safely say I couldn't be happier to have been able to participate in this program. I learnt so much about myself this semester and how I have already grown and will continue to grow now with a whole new array of people who have my back. I cannot wait to see how Chesapeake Semester will continue to shape my path forward and allow me to look back on what currently is, and probably always will be, my favorite semester experience at Washington College.