When I was in high school looking at colleges — twelve years ago! — I was intrigued by Deep Springs College. “Founded in 1917, the college lies in an isolated high desert valley of eastern California, about thirty miles from the nearest town. Each of its twenty-six students receive a full scholarship valued at over $50,000 per year, covering tuition, room, and board. In addition to engaging in a rigorous academic program, the all-male student body participates in self-governance and assumes substantial responsibility for the management of the college, alfalfa farm, and cattle ranch.”

I suppose it appealed to the part of me wishing to break out of my pasty-white indoor life. But then I remembered that girls are pretty nice, too, and that I was going to college to avoid manual labor, not to embrace it. I mean, this is how the college sells itself on its web site:

Students often rise before the sun. At 6:00 the dairy boys are already milking cows half asleep when the feedman gets up to do his first feed run. A farm teamer may have been in the tractor baling hay since 4:30. All of these people are especially thankful for the breakfast cook, who’s up early preparing the morning’s fixin’s.

Most labor positions entail working from lunch until dinner. This could mean spending an entire day alone in an alfalfa field fixing leaks in irrigation lines, repairing fences and gates with a partner, or working as a group to dig up frozen pipes that need to be repaired and insulated. There are less romantic jobs that could mean spending the day in the office or scrubbing toilets in the main building.

Then again, imagine studying in the middle of all this.

17 March 2003

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