What I Did This Week (Week 77)

A Radical Alternative to College

What I Did This Week (Week 77)

1/26/25

Writing to you from Uruguay.

Question for you

As I am headed back to the states in March, do you have any recommendations of things I should do there?

Butchering

We got around to butchering most of my broiler chickens this past weekend. I wanted to get it done before I leave for the sailing course in the Falkland Islands on Thursday.

The chickens were put back in the chicken coop for a few weeks ago in preparation for butchering them. Mostly, we wanted them in the chicken coop so we could fatten them up one last time.

Raising broiler chickens has been an interesting experiment.

For one, I lost more than half of them from skunks, which got into the chicken coop and the chicken tractor. Along with that, I have a better idea of what the order of operations should look like.

I’ll be gone for a long time, but if I want to continue the broiler chicken operation when I come back, I’d do a few things differently:

• Buy more chickens than I think I need (expect losses, so overload on stock)

• Build another chicken tractor (that way I can have an excess of 100 chickens)

• Expect 60-75 days to complete the growth process (I expected 50 days before, but the chickens were too small at that point)

• Have a better sales strategy to ensure that at least 50 chickens would be sold (since this was just an experiment I didn’t even think about the sales process. Marketing doesn’t matter too much right now since we have good people around us who are interested in pasture-raised meat anyway)

Anyway, the experiment is mostly over after we butchered half of the chickens.

I had only butchered chickens once before…Well, technically I only de-feathered them. Yet, this time I stepped in to cut apart and gut the chicken as well.

Honestly, it’s amazing how easy it is to process a chicken:

• Kill it

• de-feather it in by dumping it in hot water which loosens the feathers

• Once clean, cut off the feet

• Then, cut a slit near the bottom of the chicken and pull out the guts

• Cut off head and pull out esophagus

And, as yet another new thing for her to learn, my girlfriend joined in to learn the entire butchering process. So, I’m happy that she got the opportunity to do that with us.

Maritime History

I finally finished the Real History of Pirates course from Great Courses this week.

The first half of the course was great and definitely unlocked a new understanding of an interesting part of history for me. But, sadly, the second half was not well done and it seems like quantity of lectures was valued over quality.

Overall, I’m glad I still took the course and I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about maritime history.

Reading

• Finished reading The Mayflower by Rebecca Fraser

I wouldn’t recommend this book if you want something enjoyable to read. Its essentially 314 pages of fact told in chronological order, with a few imagination-provoking stories mixed in. A countless amount of names and dates make it hard to keep track of the story. However, there were a few interesting parts of the book.

• Finished reading Endurance by Alfred Lansing

Perhaps the best non-fiction book I’ve read in the last few years. The journal entries of the men aboard the Endurance for Shackleton’s expedition to the Antarctic were collected to craft the story. The pain, suffering, and hopelessness that Shackleton’s men faced for over a year is once again brought to life in this story. It really is hard to comprehend just how much suffering those men endured after being stranded in the Antarctic. Their grit is impressive.

Leaving soon

Anyway, I’ll be leaving on Thursday to head to Santiago, Chile first to buy gear for the sailing course. Then, I leave for the Falkland Islands on the 1st.

I’ll talk to you soon.

---

Are these updates informative? Are they useful? Entertaining?

Leave a comment below if you’ve got any suggestions or questions for me.

And don’t forget to send this to someone who might benefit.

I’ll see you next week.

-Maxim Benjamin Smith

---

I am acting as a guinea pig for a program which is meant to prepare young men for the future. This program is designed to be a replacement for the only three routes advertised to young men today - go to college, the military, or a dead-end job.

All of these typical routes of life are designed to shape us into cogs for a wheel that doesn’t serve us. Wasted time, debt, lack of skills, and a soul crushing job define many who follow the traditional route.

This program, which we can call “The Preparation”, is meant to guide young men on a path where they properly utilize their time to gain skills, build relationships, and reach a state of being truly educated. The Preparation is meant to set young men up for success.

What appeals to me about The Preparation is the idea of the type of man I could be. The path to becoming a skilled, dangerous, and competent man is much more clear now. I’ve always been impressed by characters like The Count of Monte Cristo, men who accumulated knowledge and skills over a long period of time and eventually became incredibly capable men.

Young men today do not have a guiding light. We have few mentors and no one to emulate. We have been told that there are only a few paths to success in this world. For intelligent and ambitious people - college is sold to us as the one true path. And yet that path seems completely uncertain today.

We desperately need something real to grab onto. I think this is it.

I’m putting the ideas into action. Will it work? I can’t be sure, but I’m doing my best. I’m more than 60 weeks into the program at this point. So far, so good.

You can follow me along as I follow the program. Each week, I summarize all that I did.

My objective in sharing this is three fold:

1. Documenting my progress holds me accountable.

2. I hope these updates will show other young men that there is another path we can take.

3. For the parents who stumble upon this log, I want to prove to you that telling your children that the conventional path - college, debt, and a job is not the foolproof path you think it is.

And if you’re still unsure about all of this…here is a list of some of my more notable accomplishments over the past year:

- Learned basic conversational Spanish (and still improving)

- Became a Certified EMT

- Became a certified wildland firefighter

- Read dozens of books on economics, philosophy, sales, marketing and personal development along with essays and historical speeches

- Attended a Wrangler school in Wyoming

- Worked as a ranch hand on a regenerative cattle ranch

- Learned to operate farm equipment

- Learned to shoe horses

-Learned the basics of horsemanship

-Learned how to inspect and treat cattle

-Learned basics of accounting

- Completed Copywriting Course

- Worked for 26 days as an EMT on the 2024 Falls Fire in Oregon earned $600/day

- Regular practice of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and recently added Muay Thai

- Climbed 3 Fourteeners in Colorado

-Climbed most of a Thirteener in Colorado

- Learned how to pack mules and lead them into the backcountry

- Finished closed-water scuba dive

- Did my first (tandem) skydiving jump

- Wrote 40+ essays

- Spent 100s of hours practicing to be competent in chess. Had private lessons with a chess master

-Completed a REMS (Rapid Extrication Module Support) course in South Dakota (Learned how to rappel, create raising systems, build lowering systems, and give and receive coordinates)

-Learned how to tie a variety of knots and hitches

-Became a public notary in Colorado

-Rock climbed for the first time

-Completed a motorcycle driving course

-Worked 2 menial jobs (Office Depot and Westside Pizza)

-Worked for 15 days on the Willamette fire complex in Oregon as an EMT making $600/day

-Completed 4 open water scuba dives and became an open water certified scuba diver

-Studied regenerative agriculture