A+ World Academy - Review #3

The moats unique thing about A+ World Academy is the fact that it’s a school on a tall ship. You’re not only attending the school, you’re also working as a crew member on the ship. This taught me a how to cooperate better with the people around me, and also a lot of discipline. The fact that you get to visit a lot of different countries and cultures during the school year as well is a big plus! I learned so much about myself the year I attended A+ World Academy. For me, since I’m Norwegian, being taught everything in English was really helpful in improving my English.

The year on the boarding school just really changed me completely as a person in all possible ways. During the year I grew into a much more mature and reflected person, and I noticed that when I came home, stupid things that meant a lot to my friends were things I really couldn’t care less about anymore.The absolut best thing that happened to me was getting to know lake the people. We’re all really good friends today and we met regularly, maybe once every two or three months. They know me better than anyone else.

If I could do anything differently it would probably be to appreciate it more when I was there. There were many times when we were complaining about being tired or just stayed at the ship during ports to relax, but I wish I just pushed through it to get even more out of my year than I already did.

I liked everything. There actually isn’t anything I disliked. Of course, visiting different countries is exciting, but the life onboard the ship was amazing as well.

Please, enjoy your time there. You may think 9-10 months is a long time, but I promise the time just flows away and suddenly it’s graduation and time to go back home again..

We had academics going on from 9 in the morning til 6 in the afternoon, with some free hours and day watch in between. We also har school every day when we were out sailing, so no weekends. I actually liked that because it made it possible for us to have a lot of freetime in port. Our classes were small and the teachers were all very helpful and available all the time because we were living with them.

We didn’t have much of an athletic program at the school, other than working out on deck which was voluntary so I don’t have so much to say about it. It would probably be better if we had some mandatory athletics, but all our working on the ship counted as athletics for us.

There was really no arts, music and theatre program other than the drama club which is also voluntary. I did not participate in the drama club, so I don’t have much to say about it.

As earlier mentioned, we only had a few clubs like the drama club, baking club and prom committee. We didn’t really have any extracurricular activities other than that.

I loved the dorm life in my school! We all slept in the same room in hammocks, but the boys side and the girls side was divided by some curtains. It may sound tiring but I really loved it. Also, most of us slept in hammocks, only a few had beds and those who had beds mostly wished for hammocks. We also had to get up during the night for 2 hours to work and be on watch, so we slept in “watches”. All the people in the same watch slept in the same areas so it would be easier to wake us up and not everybody else.

All dining, both breakfast, lunch and dinner happens in the same room as we sleep. The beds turns into benches and the hammocks are hung away in the morning. There was in fact a lot of diversity in the food, and vegetarian options were offered to those who needed that. Allergies were also taken care of by the chef. Students help out making the food in galley-teams. So we had to help out every 10 days or so.

We didn’t really have a specific town life as we moved around to so many different towns.

The social life at our school was amazing. We were 60 students and around 20 crew members, and living in such a small space together we quickly turned into a big family. I never felt alone or like I didn’t have anyone to talk to. Everyone was so open to getting to know each other. I travelled alone and didn’t know anyone, but I got friends really quickly, and the friends I got in the first couple of friends are still my best friends today.