Vanessa Woodside, Class of 1996
On a whim, I decided to audition to be a dancer in the production shows on Holland America
cruise ships, thinking that would certainly be a far reach from the academic existence I had known
thus far. As luck would have it, I was hired and almost immediately sent out to sea to replace a
dancer in the cast of the ms Veendam, which sailed to Alaska for 6 months during 2002. So, rather
than leading an impoverished life as an English teacher in Latin America, I ended up sailing on a
luxury cruise ship, being paid to do what I love! Beyond that, I found my husband! Matt and I met
while he was working as the sound technician and stage manager onboard the Veendam, and we
continued working together with additional contracts on the ms Maasdam (sailing in the Caribbean,
Alaska, and all the places in between), and the ms Statendam (sailing in Hawaii and Mexico). We
finished up our wedding plans while sailing on the ms Volendam (in Alaska, where we had enjoyed
our very first date a couple of years beforehand), and made it back to California for our August 21
wedding. I have had an amazing opportunity to travel while paying off those pesky student loans,
and have enjoyed the ample free time this lifestyle offers, and still can't believe I came back with
a husband as well! However, I do miss the intellectual rigors of graduate school, so we'll be returning
to land following one last hurrah at sea (this time on the ms Zuiderdam in the Caribbean) before moving
to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I will complete graduate work in Hispanic Literature at UNM.
Last Updated: October, 2004
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After graduating from UC Santa Barbara with a major in Spanish Literature and minors in both Linguistics
and Speech and Hearing Sciences in 2000, I immediately began my graduate studies in the Joint Doctoral
Program in Language and Communicative Disorders at UC San Diego and San Diego State University. I
spent two years in San Diego, studying bilingualism from a neurological perspective through designing
experiments using electrodes to track event-related potentials, and also developing language-appropriate
assessment tools to determine language disorders and deficiencies in bilingual children. Somehow, though, I
wasn't certain that I was headed down the right career path, and decided I could use some time away
from academia. I first went backpacking around South America for a couple of months (I'd discovered
how much I love to travel while studying abroad in Salamanca, Spain, while an undergrad), and then
planned to teach English as a Second Language in Latin America after I received my certification to
do so. As fate would have it, though, I couldn't keep dance and performance out of my life.