So, I’m not going to give a complete run-down of my Rome trip. Such an account would be both time-consuming and repetitive, since the Immersion Trip blog covers a fair amount of the trip. Instead, I’m just going to touch on a few things.
The first is the immediate matter at hand–blogs. Wabash immersion trips these days require every participating student to write a blog about their experiences. The immersion trip blogs are widely read and student entries, written during the trip, are valuable. Since no Wabash staff member traveled with our group, Hartnett appointed me “blog czar,” in charge of collecting the blogs and shipping them off to Public Affairs. It was sort of funny to talk to students about it, since many of them either didn’t know what they were doing or took quite a long time in doing so. It’s easy to forget not everyone has been blogging regularly since freshman year.
And since there was no staff member to take picture, I also moonlighted as photographer. I’m not a big travel photographer, especially in Western Europe, since most subjects either have many, better pictures of them already or aren’t very interesting to look at as photographs. Moreover, taking pictures removes the photographer from the action at hand, which is why I rarely take pictures while visiting museums or doing site visits for class. However, taking pictures of people is a bit more fun. And since I had already visited many of the sites we’d be covering, I wouldn’t feel as guilty about giving my less-than-complete attention. And so I spent a fair chunk of time trying to capture a few different scenes, tailored for college blogs:
- Professors engaging a group of students, whose interested faces are framed by an important educational site
- Several students enjoying the common bond of Wabash brotherhood in a unique and exciting locale
- A student or two deeply engrossed in exploring a single facet of their studies…in living color
- The entire class posing for a picture, with a newfound sense of unity and purpose reinforced by the shared personal and academic development that Wabash Immersion Trips engender
I have many of each, including about about hundred of the first, starring Dr. Hartnett.
