One Week as a "Planted Gap Year" Student

For those of you who haven't heard yet, I am attending Planted this year. I've been here for about 10 weeks, and we've already done a ton! I recently posted a YouTube vlog about how an average week is. Here are some behind the scenes or explanations that didn't make it into the video.

{monday}

I started filming on Monday morning, and I didn't film class on any of the class days (monday-thursday). Class is usually three hours with a couple of breaks. On Mondays we have work areas, which can be farm, camp, or kitchen. I was on farm the week I filmed (along with Beth). We sorted out veggies that had started to go bad and then we needed to check on one of our sheep, because she had been limping. That required chasing and luring the herd to attempt to get her away. (apparently me running along and recording the whole affair was very amusing for some of the other students). Finally, we finished some of the last harvesting of the season and cleaned the pig pen to give them fresh bedding.

I also don't have much film from the community dinner (every Monday evening). It was oktober fest themed, so we had pork and sauerkraut along with a lot of potato side dishes. Afterwards we had mandatory fun, kaber tossing.

{tuesday}

On Tuesdays classes usually start an hour late and we have some class after lunch as well. I used that time to work on homework to make up for the busy day on Monday. I actually did homework for the whole evening as well. We were doing deep studies of several passages of scripture.

{wednesday}

We had morning class on Wednesday, then I messed around with my ukulele after lunch before heading to my work area (again). This time we were moving the chicken tractor and chicken coop down so that the flock could get fresh ground. That took a lot of time just because the whole fence had to get moved first. We also did some last-minute harvesting and of more crops. The rest of the night was probably spent studying (I don't remember).

{thursday}

Once again, we had morning class, lots of studying, and then we had Thursday night discussion. Thursday night discussions are just fellowship times where the students, professor, and any Planted staff meet at the Feister's house (David Feister is the director of Planted) to ask any questions about the class or just talk about life.

{friday}

Friday was great, we had no (official) plans. I and several students created a very large blanket fort using the couches in the student lounge and watched movies. We also baked cookies and generally felt very fall-ish, as it was raining. Meals are often at other people's houses on Fridays as well.

{saturday}

We had our first life skill electives on Saturday. Half of us went to do pottery in a neighboring town while the others were doing bee keeping. Pottery was really fun, and it took most of the day. After we finished, we got ready and attended a fundraising banquet held by the local crisis pregnancy center, Heart of Tioga.

Overall, this was the most normal week we've had in a while. It was nice, but it has also just felt weird most of the time because each week is so different. We have different weekly chores and week areas, so each week feels very new.

here is a link to my YouTube video, don’t forget to leave a like:

one week as a planted gap year student | gracike