Hello All!

To my friends and family interested in my education opportunity in Nosara, Costa Rica this summer, to my classmates, and to others who stumbled upon this blog, I want to begin by telling you how excited I am for this opportunity. I have never had the opportunity to study outside of the United States before and I am anxiously excited to expand my mind in this new setting. To those who are unaware, this blog will be a documentation of my personal and intellectual progress as I take the course “Surfing Centuries” offered by Guilford College.

During this course, I will read texts and watch films created from the perspective of different disciplines about the specific topic of surfing. I will also venture to Nosara with my class where we will learn to surf and where we will connect our academic resources to not only our experience there but the community of Nosara as a whole. In this blog, these connections and many others will be explored.

That being said, while I am incredibly excited for this opportunity, I am also nervous. This course is structured in a more open way than any course I have taken before. Rather than following the common academic model of writing to satisfy an instructor’s specific requirements, this course, is structured in a way to encourage my growth and exploration -- meaning the blog entries that will follow are not based on an instructor’s prompt. Instead, my blog will be based on the readings, and later the experiences of this course, but I will write what I am lead to. As I mentioned before, I have never taken a course with such freedom, and as a result I am struggling, and will continue to struggle, with what I am “supposed” to write. I am excited for this class to challenge my way of thinking in this mean (as well as others), and excited to see how I grow as a learner and as a person in response.

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