What do college students and professors do the day after graduation?
Do they get up really early and rush to the first day of a new class or do they drive to the beach?
Well, in my world, they do both.
That's right, it's time for the Sand Sculpture class! Dude. This class is my absolute favorite for so many reasons and this year's class surpassed my expectations. If you have time to listen I need to tell you about this...
We really did get up early. Some of us who needed to run before the early departure woke up long before the sunrise. Some of us had to go to graduation the day before and by the time we got home and realized we needed to pack 18 shovels, buckets, and our own stuff for the week ahead it was already late and we were already tired. But I teach a class on the beach so I understand you're not here to listen to me complain. I eased out of bed at that early alarm and ran and got myself properly coffeed up for the road. I picked up some travelers on the way and crammed them into my already tightly packed Toyota. The van was right behind me and we were headed for the happiest place on Earth (according to me).
I made a quick little stop at The Grilled Cheese and Crabcake Company for a bite or two of lunch and then rolled into the hotel parking lot under sunny skies. We threw our things down and headed out for project number one. Look at those skies!
It was sunny and in the mid 70s. There was a strong breeze. It felt amazing. Maybe it was the weather that had everyone feeling great, but there was a really good vibe in the air. Maybe that's just how it feels to have class on the beach.
Day one is a good day to have all that positivity. It's the day that students taking the class for the first time begin to realize what a huge amount of physical labor is involved. Along with the shoveling of literal tons of sand, there's the long walks from the surf with 5 gallons of water.
The good vibes and excitement make the first day a great time for McSelfies with everyone. That's Grace, a second timer, and Liz.
That's Brianna.
That's Lilly.
And that's Abigail. Abigail was a first timer to the class and she had never had me as a teacher before. I bet that was weird. First day of class and your professor shows up with no shirt, giving everyone high fives and yelling "WOOOOOOOOO!" at the top of his lungs every few minutes. All part of the evil plan. Muhahahahahaha!
Let me introduce you to the group. More or less from the left: Kaylen, Tien, Abigail, Elizabeth, Michael, Emily, Grace, Victor, Lilly, Molly, Chanel, Seth, Katherine, Jester, Brianna and Liz.
And that's the sand sculpture we made on the first day. It's a skull with huge teeth and braces. It has a wing and a strong crab claw arm. There was an elephant on the back side. It was immediately clear that I was dealing with a hardworking group of people. Everyone worked together well on the first day and everyone seemed to grasp the idea of how to work with sand as a sculptural material.
After a good sand workout, we got ourselves cleaned up for dinner out. Since the very first year, Habanero's has been a traditional stop for us. This was the first year we had to sit inside, but they gave us our own room and it was pretty cool. As we were looking over the menu, Singletary was sitting beside me and it came up in conversation that I really want to give a Ted Talk before I die. Singletary asked what I would talk about and I had no idea. I told her I would come up with something. So she challenged me to come up with a Ted Talk and give it right there in the restaurant. Challenge accepted! I gathered my thoughts over chips and salsa, downloaded a couple of images from Google (to use as my slides), stood up and gave a Ted Talk on "The Philosophy of High Fives". That was one of my slides up there. High fives have become very important to me recently as I'm learning new strategies for navigating the social aspects of university teaching. They would also be a very important part of this class trip. There are several video clips of my Ted Talk floating around the cloud somewhere. I'll spare you those here but I'm sure you wouldn't have to search very hard to find someone willing to share one. It was a good laugh.
We all had to check out individually after eating and our line snaked all the way through the restaurant.
Everyone was happy. Lots of smiles. It was also Liz's birthday and we had the waiter bring a treat for her while we sang. We take birthdays seriously.
After a grocery store run to stock up on breakfast and lunch items for the week, we made it back to the hotel after dark.
The next morning was the start of our first full day on the beach. I run at sunrise every morning on these trips and I invite everyone to run or walk with me. We were missing our devoted running friend, Bolt, but I knew I could at least count on the Gazelle (Katherine). She and Victor rolled out to the sand just before the sun made her grand entrance. The hot pink circle broke the horizon just before we started running and it was absolutely beautiful. We've had a lot of clouds and rain this winter/spring and it feels like it's rained every day for months. There were a couple of weeks of crappy weather just before this trip and it was like someone flipped the summer switch the day we drove down. The weather was marvelous all week long. Every single day brought a more and more impressive sunrise.
It was a blue sky day. Mid 70s again and a stiff breeze all day long. Everyone was still riding high on good vibes and they all turned that energy into excellent sculptural work. Michael and I were hat twins all week but Chanel and Lilly had the coolest hats by far.
I think this abstract mother and child was made by Kaylen.
And this sleeping Patrick Star with the beautiful backside was created by Tien.
Victor began his week long battle with gravity by creating this huge fist rising up out of the sand. There was a long index finger at one point. Valuable lessons were learned. Muhahahahahaha!
Brianna works at a BBQ restaurant and she created this huge sand pig.
A cool jellyfish.
A great ice cream cone by Katherine.
All work and no play is just not how we do things. After studio time was finished, we balanced our shower time before dinner with a little surfing.
This was Seth's first time on a surfboard.
One of the great surprises of this trip was Esnipes bringing Susie and Maggie down to hang out with us for a couple of days. They discovered the little clams that dig down into the wet sand and I got to help them locate some and play with them. It was a lot of fun.
I promise I did some work. The hotel that hosts us on this trip treats us very well. This year they asked if we would make a sand sculpture portrait of their regional manager. They provided me with this photo for reference.
Between clamming with the kids, surfing with the students, photographing, handling social media and doing some actual teaching....I sculpted the dude's head. The mangers loved it and they came out to pose with it before sending it to him. I hope he liked it so we'll be welcome again next year.
But seriously y'all....those hats!
This year we had Chewie the service dog with us. He had the best job. He got to nap all day in his tent.
This day was the Friday of Bike Week. We always manage to catch at least a part of Bike Week on this trip. We opted for some fine dining at Cracker Barrel where at least one of us did some maple syrup shots. Seth put me up to it but then he faked drinking his. We had to divide up into groups of 4 or 5 in order to eat in the same little dining section and this helped everyone spread out and get to know each other better. The social dynamic on this trip was really interesting. 10 of the 16 students were freshmen last year. The other 6 were scattered among their 2nd to 4th years in college. Everyone seemed eager to get along with everyone else.
Our annual Putt Putt competition was lined up after dinner. Singletary will never read this so let me be completely honest. She is the luckiest mini golfer in the world. She usually manages a hole in one, but God only knows how. It's not uncommon for her to injure a student by wacking them with a stray golf ball. Ducks fear her swing. Tree frogs fall silent in her presence. After a couple of holes, everyone ahead of her takes cover when she steps up to the tee.
Still it was not Singletary I was competing against. My competition was Brianna. She was something of a golfer in high school and when we talked about Putt Putt at dinner, she became deadly serious. (I'm terrible at Putt Putt but I do love to trash talk.)
Our group took over half the golf place. We were pretty terrible so we took a long time. We also had some free entertainment from Bike Week. We watched police pull people over the entire time we were there.
This might be a good time to talk about Victor. I love him. I mean it, I really do. I met Victor at an Open House event when he was a high school senior. I could tell he was my kind of strange. I got to know him a little during the fall at art events but didn't get to teach him until the spring semester. He's not a fan of sand, sun, beaches and sweating so I didn't think he was interested in going on this trip. I was surprised and thrilled when he said he was going. He wore black leggings every day to keep the sand away from him and it worked pretty well. I forget who dropped their hat on his head but he has the superpower to make any accessory or prop work for him. He immediately owns it and it becomes a part of him. He's also great at posing for photos. Victor is someone you always want around you. He's one of those people who make a situation better with his presence. I'd like to share some of the funny things he said or some of the interesting questions he asked, but I doubt these things would translate well outside of the beach setting and I'd have to do so much explaining. I just hope you get to meet Victor one day and hang out. Then you'll know.
That's the end of Part One.
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