“What are your overall reflections of your experience?”

Taking this course was the best decision I made! I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to join the course and I am forever grateful for it. My senior year at Penn state Abington was honestly the best year of my college career and I have this course to thank for that. Over these past two semesters, the whole class became a small family over time due to working so closely together.  I was able to not only get to know my classmates more but also my professors, John and Bonnie, as well as the seaport shipwrights, Dave and Jeff!  This course was different from most college courses, the hands-on approach of learning to build the boat is what made this course so special! If I could build another boat at the Seaport and with everyone again, I would gladly sign up in a heartbeat. 

Photo from Bonnie’s Instagram

“What did you learn?”

Learning how to build a duck boat at the Seaport was life changing and inspiring for me. I truly enjoyed learning how to use all the different tools in the boat shop. I also found them so fascinating to look at and use, especially all the different hand planners. I found a new love and appreciation for tools and woodworking overall. As someone who had little to no experience in woodworking, I feel like I’m a semi-decent woodworker now after building our Squonk. Woodworking and learning how to build different things is a special craft and type of art form. For me, thinking of all the logical aspects of boat building to the art aspects can be seen in other aspects in my life as well! This course really opened my eyes to seeing the world a little differently where analytical thinking and creativing can overlap. 

I also learned a handful about the city of philadelphia, particularly near the Seaport museum despite living in the city for most of my life. Since our boat is named Squonk, I was informed about its story and the origin of where it came from. It’s a mythical creature that’s native to Pennsylvania. I personally learned a lot about other things outside of boat building from my peers and professor which I will always remember. 

Sad Squonk; The legend Tale

“What challenges as a whole did you face and how did you overcome them?”

A few challenges I faced throughout the course was learning how to adapt to mistakes or problems made through the general boat building process. As a whole class, sometimes we would all take a step back and to think about how to fix the mistakes made or problems faced. This was something that overtime, I began to quickly adjust to and learnt to think about solutions out loud with others to gather other opinions and reassurance as well as general help.  I am someone who sometimes self-doubts my decisions but this course allowed me to adapt to mistakes and to quickly think of solutions or alternative approaches to continue moving forward. 

Pushing Through The Mistakes

“What experiences did you find to be the most memorable and rewarding?”

The overall experience I found to be the most memorable and rewarding was the way we all came together as a small family to truly work on this boat. Everyone truly tried and genuinely wanted to be at the boat shop every friday. Having this motivated atmosphere from everyone really made working on the Squonk so rewarding since we all collectively  worked so hard on building it. Just everyone part of the course, from the classmates to John, Bonnie, Dave and Jeff, everyone individually made this experience so memorable. I’m always going to remember this year and treasure all the memories we made from working extremely hard on the boat to goofy around and making inside jokes in the shop. There was never a dull moment in the course and that’s what made it so memorable to me! It is bittersweet to have this course come to an end as I will personally miss seeing everyone on friday afternoons. I really enjoyed working with everyone and I hope to one day build another boat or even continue to explore the world of wood work myself in my spare time. 

Goofy Goobers

Journal Response

I actually dont know where my journal is so I wasn’t able to work on a new journal repsonse for my reflection, I’m so sorry!