Adrian's Diploma
 
   
   
   
   What follows is a list of suggested activities for someone to do in order
to prepare for easy-going independent adulthood. Any age seems appropriate
for this list given the person feels actually motivated. Conventional school
could be a helpful experience, but primarily as a contrasting foreign
environment to visit briefly in order to have a more concrete basis for
views about it. The list presumes a stable sponsoring social context; better
an institutional one rather than none at all, as long as the activities are
permitted.
  
  - Read and comprehend twelve issues of National Geographic Magazine.
  - Maintain a complete financial record of one's own living costs and
purchases for one month, itemized in categories, and assessed as
percentages at the end of the month.
  - Prepare from fundamental ingredients all of one's own food for one
week, handling all purchasing, equipment maintantence and cleanup.
  - Develop a style of muscle stretching. Train for and run a non-stop four
mile course, and walk a ten mile course several times.
  - Establish minimal competence on one musical instrument, and write two
songs.
  - Do a simple sewing repair.
  - Build a blank book and keep a diary for one year, written as kindly and
cheerfully as possible, with intent to have others read it.
  - Remove and install a bicycle crank spindle, a car tire, a duplex outlet,
a light switch, a light fixture, a breaker, a water heater thermostat and
water supply lines, a stove burner, the drain plumbing under a sink, a water
supply valve for a sink or toilet, a toilet tank valve, a 4 foot square
section of wallboard, and the weatherstripping on a door.
  - Start a car with a jump battery and a device to directly trigger the
starter solenoid switch.
  - Complete the manufacturer's recommended yearly maintanence on a built
in heater of any sort.
  - Defrost and clean a refrigerator.
  - Establish a camp in a wilderness area and live there for one week.
  - Live outdoors within a city limit for one week, eating from groceries
and sleeping sly.
  - Maintain a congential presense in a household of six or more
financially independent people, free of institutional oversite, for three
months.
  - Draw complete plans in conventional format for a new window, door,
porch or bearing wall. Submit them to the building department and the
property owner and complete the project.
  - Complete the state and federal income tax forms for someone with
regular employment
  - Handle whatever is emotionally and psychically required to reliably
reach orgasm alone.
  - Exhaustively interview several successfully coupled older people
related to how to befriend someone with intent to couple with them.
  - Spend one week in a complete immersion in an identity or frame of
reference that can be reliably assessed as being that of the opposite sex.
  - Do a carefully choreographed experience with an intensely hallucinatory
drug.
  - Obtain a driver's licence.
  - Work for a temporary employment service for one month.
  - Start a very small business, with few if any other people, such as a
saturday market booth or an ad in the labor section of craig's list.
  - Format a computer harddrive and load an operating system.
  - Make a tiny easily carried device to hold a printed copy of all
relevant phone numbers and addresses, identity cards, a pen, blank paper
and a clock. Invent and establish a way to safely carry a hundred dollars.
  - Establish a permanent 500 dollar easily liquidatable savings of some
kind.
  - Establish a medical supply to completely handle a severe stomach ache,
severe nausea, a badly pulled muscle, advanced skin or tooth infection,
poison oak, bee sting, fever, cough that prevents sleep, and a weak immune
system.
  - Clean out a new tooth cavity and maintain it clean and pain free for
one month without dental assistance.
  - Sprout, raise and harvest a simple garden with a legume, a root crop, a
leafy green and an aromatic herb. Find and harvest some wild fruit.
  - Make a compost pile of kitchen scrap, meat, manure, and dry vegetation,
and observe it's temperature and appearance, unstirred, for one year.
  - Spend a month in a foreign country.
  
   
   I specifically exclude any deliberate group activities, competitive
activities, or explorations involving violence or children, though they all
appear to be part of adult responsibility. I have not observed genuine
progress into what I call adult understanding that includes them.

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