Only two years through my university degree, I have known for the last three months that I am not coming back for a third. Seven friends and I are moving to the island of Faial to run a self-sustainable farm.
What? Where? Why? How? Those are all fair questions, but luckily, I’d been fielding them since January.
Faial is one of nine islands known collectively as the Azores. This series of islands is governed by Portugal and is located 1,500 kilometres off the coast of Europe and 3,900 kilometres off the coast of North America. Yes, we’re moving to the middle of the ocean.
One early January evening, I was sitting in my room with three of my friends and we were discussing life in rural France. We spoke of how we adored the slow, simple lifestyle. I recounted stories of my previous visits to Europe and how much I enjoyed the relaxed way of life.
As we discussed all of the benefits of such a way of life, my friend Mark revealed with incredible excitement that his family had a beach house in the Azores and that we would be able to use it.
Although we met the initial news with caution, we discussed the idea all night, and with Mark’s assurance that this was in fact feasible, our enthusiasm could not be controlled. We stayed up until dawn looking at pictures of the land on the Internet, dreaming of swimming in the natural hot springs and taking long walks to market.
The next day, we spread the news to our close friends and we all met online to discuss the possibility of leaving North America. Mark had spoken with his parents and had great news for us.
When he told his parents the idea, his mother said that it was her great regret that Mark never lived there, and that she would help us get there. In addition to giving us the beach house that Mark told us about, it was revealed that Mark’s grandfather, who lives in Canada, has a farmhouse and farm land on the island that he was willing to give us.
Although we only found out about the opportunity available to us in the Azores this January, the idea of living a lifestyle outside of our social norms is one that had been brewing in our social circle for a long time.
The first aspect of this society that caused us to start thinking outside of the box was, not surprisingly, education. We have all been dissatisfied with the standardized, structured education that has been the predominant method of teaching students since long before we started our schooling.
As we grew up in this system, we began to detest it. I suppose my own issues came into focus early in high school, and have been growing in depth and intensity ever since.
One of my main qualms with our education system is the idea of giving out grades. Although I have no inherent problem with the idea of passing judgment on scholastic accomplishments, I feel that the process of grading has warped the educational process and subsequently the methods that are used to learn and “excel.” Once grading becomes an issue, it seems to me that the battle is on to simply figure out what it is the teacher or professor wants to see. Even worse, in high school especially, the grading process forces you to prepare and research academic works in a certain manner.
I remember a term paper assigned in my first-year history course at Queen’s that made me think that there had to be a better way. Despite the class consisting of a couple of hundred students, the assignment featured one essay topic—only one question to answer. We were given one book to read, and were told to write an eight-page paper.
Despite receiving a good mark for the essay I wrote, I was disgusted with the fact that my learning process consisted of footnoting someone with more qualifications than myself, and simply reinforcing everything that he had already said. Surely my brain was more capable than that.
As I became more and more apathetic to the way I was learning, I began to search for a different method, one that would appeal to my passions and my learning style, while emphasizing that the education of my mind should be led by my mind.
I would suggest that the vast majority of learning I do goes unrewarded in this system. As a stage and screen studies student at Queen’s, I am not given credits for reading works that interest me yet fall outside of our curriculum, nor am I rewarded for learning to play a musical instrument, trying my hand at painting, learning a new language or simply discussing political, philosophical and social issues with my peers and family.
As I began to see that our system does not work for my own education, and that my friends also felt similarly, we began to discuss other ways of feeding our minds.
Last August, my friends and I travelled to Saratoga Springs in upstate New York to see a couple of Dave Matthews Band concerts. We camped out for four days and read, talked and played music. I remember this as the happiest time of my life to date.
Everyone involved was so happy, so relaxed and so peaceful. Much of our discussion that weekend dealt with the idea of our education. We all agreed that the best way for us to learn would be in an environment with no restrictions, no assignments, no marks and no deadlines.
The idea would be to learn what you what, when you want and how you want. From this notion was born an idea of a minimalist artistic commune that we referred to as the Hamlet.
To us, the Hamlet would be a home, a workplace and a school. None of us place any value on material wealth, and we would all share everything we have with each other, including money. Pieces of paper with numbers on them do not make us better than anyone else.
We realized that all we needed to be happy was a shared living space, a bed, food, water and artistic and educational resources. So that is what we’re getting.
We are moving to the Azores together, and we are bringing musical equipment, a digital recording studio, an art studio, a collection of reading material, graphic arts equipment, a digital video camera with editing software and a digital camera and a computer that will be hooked up to the Internet, allowing us to maintain communication and get information.
We did not plan on moving into a Hamlet for years, but a combination of good fortune, hard work and good decisions have allowed us to try this in September.
We plan to live off the land and learn and create at our own pace and leisure. We hope to play concerts on the islands and show our art and writing on our website. We are going to map the island ourselves, exploring all that this untouched environment has to offer.
We are looking forward to learning a new language, a new culture and a new lifestyle. We can’t wait to make music, shoot films, write plays, paint pictures, read books and write social critiques.
Something tells me we’ll be acquiring more knowledge this fall than any that began inside a classroom. Peace.
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Mike Terry will not be receiving any official credits for his education in the Azores … and it doesn’t bother him at all.
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