I was just reading the Sterling College newsletter sterlingcollege.edu and no, I didnt graduate from there - I graduated from Eisenhower College, but did a January Independent Study Program at The Rural Resources Study Center (as it was then known). If you read their current booklet, it sounds noble and lofty. You may not have great grades, but if youre deeply interested in the environment, you can get financial aid. You can take not one, but two Outward Bound programs, intermediate and advanced, and if youre very good, you can go on to climb K2. (Although to be fair, their K2 climber found the dead frozen bodies of K2 climbers who had gone before her.) The reason I went to Craftsbury Common, VT, was far different: My family, whose mantra was We cant afford it before they even found out what you wanted or how much it would cost, wouldnt pay for me to travel anywhere my senior year, and all I could afford was next door in Vermont. I had done the NNY concept of womens work on a farm all my life - tedious once-a-week-heavily-accountable grocery trips to the store 4 miles away while doing the laundry at the Laundromat, mopping cowshitty floors, fixing suppers for people who didnt care, and similar soul-sucking tasks, while the farmers worked at other more interesting jobs for real money to support the farm. I planned to write about the decline of the small farm, and frankly, I was all for it. Sterling, as it is now known, taught me some basic rural survival skills which apparently I was supposed to have already picked up by osmosis, but hadnt; I can honestly say Ive winter-camped once, on the side of a mountain in -6 temperatures; Ive backed a horse up by voice command; Ive used a hatchet; I know why you top evergreens; I can tell hardwood from softwood. Ok, been there, done that. It taught me quite a bit about people, too: one preppie who arrived a week late because shed been skiing (!) with her family (!) in the Rockies (!!!) and we 2 neophyte girls hated her like poison because we were ALWAYS being told to watch her to see how she did this and that, had fiercely competitive unloving siblings who challenged everything she said with how theyd done more of it, faster, harder, yesterday. So yeah, we realized we didnt have it so bad with our families, there was a tradeoff. To be fair to Sterling - they are indeed now an accredited college, devoted to the rural life and the environment, sincere and serious. And maybe the small farm will survive, after all. (I admit I wont be on it when it does.) They are good people, and it is a good hands-on school if you love the environment and/or the (ideal) rural life.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 13:15:15 +0000
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