from Robyn H – posted Jan 21, 2013

So rather than wax poetic I thought I would just write down some quick thoughts about what I’ve learned from the Nantucket Semester experience so far. Being day 2 only I can say that today I learned more about community spirit than I knew before. That or I’ve at least come to understand better what community means. Of course we all knew that Nantucket represented a real community, one deeply entrenched in a spirit of cooperation, one embracing sustainability in all actions, one that would feed the spirits of our students while we fed their minds. But I could never have imagined how the reality would outstrip the imagined.

Whether it was the fact our students attended a vigil for a local woman who fights for her life or whether it was the texting and emailing back and forth with everyone involved with the program I don’t know. But at some point today, in the frigid cold and perceived isolation of the Harbor campus in Boston, one thing came into sharp focus. Nantucket is truly a community and we are more fortunate than words can say to have been embraced so warmly by it. And I mean ALL! Growing up you hear about places like Nantucket but can’t conceive they are real. As an adult you yearn for them knowing , all too well, that they are, like Santa Claus, a fiction invented to give you solace. But now “we” know. Now the students and faculty from UMass Boston really know. That they are a community and that they are being taught by the sages of Nantucket precisely what that means.