April 27: Critical Path

After our bow-in ritual, which I'll explain in a later post, the intern crew started hammering out our critical path, which is a fancy project management term for schedule. Turns out, to meet the workshop deadlines and complete the art studio, we need to do in about 9 work days what should take a building crew a month. We're going to frame the walls, infill them with a light clay mix, frame the roof, build scaffolding, a bench, closet, bed, storage, take care of an over-extended beam, design a yoga studio slash library upstairs, install electrical, prepare for the brown (base) coat of earth plaster by roughing in the windows and doors, and fix some cob areas built last year. We're really feeling deadlines now but we all know we'll bang, bang, bang, get it done (inside joke) easy because we're an awesome team.

Over the course of about two days, I had been rather freaked out by my commitments made as a board member of the New University Cooperative before I knew I was coming here in March. Due dates were coming fast and I could barely even find 20 minutes to check my emails in days. After working it out in my head, I needed to let my board members know that by reducing my current work load, I would be benefiting them in the long run since everything I learn here is applicable and very useful to our future plans to create grassroots ecological, affordable, accessible, alternative universities across Canada. One of my tasks that I kept is to improve our website www.newuniversity.ca. Check it out. My request was well received by my fellow board members and as a result, I am de-stressed, more productive and back to being present in my growing and building here. In that time of worry though, my immune system weakened and I received the illness that had been passed around to a few people. Thankfully, since I took care of the source of my weakness, I got over it in a matter of days with the help of oil of oregano and a tonic of ecchinecia (sp?) that really kicks you in the face. Heheh. Yay.