Blog post by Tobias • October 2, 2019


Welcome to my fourth blog post about my School at Sea adventure. In case you missed my other posts, you can find out more about me here and find all my entries to date here.

This post is the prologue to a series of six blog posts I will be writing along the way to document my journey. These posts will be summaries of a log that I write for School at Sea called my ‘SAS Story’. I will write these SAS Stories between Amsterdam – Tenerife, Tenerife – Dominica, Dominica – Panama, Panama – Cuba, Cuba – Azores, and Azores – Ijmuiden. Each post will include input from the team about my efforts, teamwork, independence, and development in general throughout each leg of the journey. I too will be writing about the things that matter to me and what I have learned and noticed.

Right now I’ve started keeping a record of my sleeping, eating, and studying habits so we can see how they change during the trip. At the moment I have pretty regular eating and sleeping habits. I get up at 06:30, I eat between 2 and 4 slices of bread, in the afternoon I eat 3 slices of bread and some fruit or cookies, and in the evening I eat a hot meal. This can be something different every day because we have a grocery box that is delivered every week. I go to sleep around 22:40. Most of my habits are the same at the weekend except I go to sleep a bit later and I get up a bit later. During the trip we will have to bake our own bread. I hope that works well because I really enjoy my bread.

I’m also recording the goals that I want to achieve. We call them our ‘Sun Goals’. These are the most important goals for us. For me so far, mine focus on finding out how to work more efficiently so that I can learn more easily, and also improving my ability to work in a team. It would make a really big difference if I could work more efficiently because at the moment my ADHD means that I struggle with this.   

I’m also keeping a log of my developing skills using the STARr model (Situation – Task – Action – Result – Reflection). During the trip we will report on our competencies, setting goals for ourselves and reflecting on our. At this moment I find it a bit hard to use the STARr model because I don`t really know it that well, but this is an opportunity for me to practice it more and seek support.

A photograph of Tobias Zjilstra
This is me! Tobias Zjilstra

It’s not long now until we start our journey. More from me soon!