Great Island, Program Has Problems

It seems like this program has changed a lot since the Hurricane in 2017. The staff has turned over, rules have gotten stricter, and overall program quality seems to have decreased (unfortunately). Academics aren't too difficult but lots of busy work and boring class time restricts your time out in the field (classes are 8am to 6pm M, T, Th, F while the semester is in full swing). Lectures could have been cut in half with the same content covered. On Wednesday and Saturday you have waterfront and community service time, but due to bad planning we lost our Wednesdays during the second half of the semester. Directed research projects, advertised as a highlight for the program, only have 10 field days and really only happen during the last two weeks of the semester. Added on to this is the way the staff treats you- like a middle schooler. Curfew, no kitchen entry, have to sign out if you want to swim, not allowed to stand or move in boats (even though many students can drive boats better than the staff), etc... Its degrading and endlessly frustrating (they even went as far as to put up barbed wire and security cameras because they didn't trust us). As someone who just wanted to explore South Caicos and participate in a field studies focused program, I felt this program did not live up to many of my expectations. I had tons of fun times on South and may be a little harsh in my review, but it was hard to look past all these shortcomings during my time abroad with SFS.