You never know where things will take you...

A Radical Alternative to College

Sunday, May 25th, 2025

Writing to you from Denver, Colorado

Life, if done right, seems to be akin to the movement of a steam engine. Not the path - straight and linear - but the movement. A series of buildups and drop-offs in momentum for each pursuit…then the course is changed.

Really, it’s all leading down the same path. But, the individual pursuits give it the illusion of being many.

It takes time to get going, to catch your stride, you have to get the wheels turning.

But, when you do, the momentum builds and builds and builds.

Then…the course switches. Your tracks take you somewhere else.

The key is to build the momentum as quickly as possible. Choose a direction, shovel the coal into the firebox, and get that train chugging along at full speed.

You have no idea where things may take you.

…

A New Opportunity

Apologies for not getting back to you on the regular schedule. These past two weeks have been quite busy since I had several morning flights, lots of studying for flight school, the FAA written test, and a 5-day wilderness first responder course to attend in the high desert of southern Colorado.

I have a lot to tell you about all of that, but first I have to tell you about a new opportunity that’s come this way. One which I will begin taking advantage of tomorrow…

A couple days before taking the FAA written test I got an offer to work on an Induced Polarization Geophysics crew for 4-6 weeks.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably never heard of this before.

IP geophysics is used for mineral/ore exploration and that’s what the company I’ll be working with does. I don’t know much about it, but as far as I can tell the process involves firing electrodes into the ground to detect minerals/ore.

Depending upon what happens to the electrode you can tell what mineral/ore was hit by the electrode.

(Found this diagram on the internet. I assume this is what the process is like, but am not 100% sure)

Apparently, those who work in this field cannot find enough people with the skills or desire to do this kind of work. Again, I won’t be sure of everything this work involves until I get there, but as soon as I do I’ll let you know.

Starting tomorrow I will be in the middle of nowhere in Nevada working with (and learning from) the IP crew. It sounds like after a few weeks we will move to another site in southern Colorado.

I don’t know what the hours are like. I don’t know what the work entails. I haven’t met any of the crew in person.

But, I’m excited.

This year has turned out stranger than I thought it would…First, it was learning to sail in the Falkland Islands. Then, trying to rack up flight hours here in Colorado. A 5-day long wilderness first responder course. Next, induced polarization geophysics in Nevada. After that I’ll work on wildfires.

It’s pretty clear at this point that I’ll have to finish flight school another time.

That’s alright. I got the FAA written test done and have 18 flight hours under my belt. I’ll pick it back up when I can.

Speaking of…this is something worth mentioning…

Meaning Changes the Course

I have pretty much always been (at best) a C student. I did terribly in school and was not afraid to deny school work. I refused to do math in 2nd grade because I felt like an idiot and only remember doing good on one test during my entire time in school.

Seriously, I used to spend the entire period of math sitting in a chair and not doing any work I was given. Math isn’t my family’s strong suit, but on top of that I had transferred from a Montessori school to a public school with a completely different way of teaching. I didn’t know how to do math like all the other kids and I thought I was dumb. Plus, school felt like prison. So, I chose to sit there and do nothing.

Yet, it’s amazing what can happen when you actually care about something…

Ever since starting The Preparation my grades (whenever I have to test through a formal institution) have been B+ or A. From EMT school, to the wilderness first responder course, or the FAA written test - the grades have been pretty good despite not being particularly academically inclined.

It’s interesting how outcomes can shift once a noble path is sought after.

Last Bit of Flying for a While

Before the wilderness first responder course I finished off this time with three more flights - the longest being two and a half hours.

We practiced more of the basics: power-off stalls, slow flight, a short field takeoff, steep turns, S-turns, and over 30 touch-and-go landings. With a fair amount of time in the cockpit there was lots more practice with radio comms too.

Both instructors seemed pleased with the progress with the radio comms and with every flight maneuver we practiced (with the exception of S-turns, still haven’t gotten that one down yet).

Fortunately, as I said, I was able to take the FAA written test when I did. A month and a half of studying did pay off though - 90% on the exam.

Will jump back in the cockpit to get more flight hours in when the time is right. With the IP geophysics work and wildfire work coming up the chances are slim that I’ll be in one place long enough to fly.

Vamos a ver.

Competency Furthered

My EMT school ran from August 8th, 2023 to November 9th, 2023.

$1,500 and a 4-month course is what kickstarted the beta-testing for The Preparation. From one decision several doors where opened - the biggest being the opportunity given to me to work on wildfires as an EMT.

But, that EMT school in Boise, Idaho wasn’t the best. There was a lot I didn’t learn. The truth is EMT schools vary greatly in terms of quality - find the ones that are much more hands-on. The schools that teach you how to drive an ambulance, make you practice patient assessments, splinting, run mock scenarios…Ideally, you want to come out of school feeling like you have a solid handle on the basics.

But, either way, the real-life experience is going to do the real teaching.

EMT school covered the academic knowledge, but the hands-on stuff was largely missed. Yes, we did the basics: CPR, medication administration, and splinting, but nothing beyond that.

Later on down the line this would come back to bite me…

My first deployment on a wildfire was amazing. The atmosphere was strange, the people even stranger, but the work was exciting especially on that fire. 150,000+ acres burned, a plane crash, and lots of firefighter illnesses/injuries for medical personnel to take care of.

But, my lack of experience bittered the mood because my paramedic was mad with me for not knowing how to do a lot of things that he had learned.

That led to a justified sense of unease in my own abilities.

In preparation for fires this year (along with a desire to improve overall) I decided to take an 80-hour (30 hours of online work, 50 hours of in-person work) wilderness first responder course. Much of the knowledge/skill translates over to EMT protocols, so it works.

The course was down in Cañon City, Colorado where the wind never seems to stop blowing and the sun burns the skin quick…

Most of it seems like a blur now. Much of the time we were sitting under a pavilion listening to the instructors talk about everything from shock to open-book pelvis fractures (wouldn’t recommend looking that up).

(I was one of the “patients” for a scenario we did…a mountain bike crash ruined my day and left me with a bruised abdomen (the makeup was great) and a traumatic brain injury)

But, one night (a night I’ll never forget) really made it all worth it…

Besides the hours upon hours of lectures we also did quite a few mock scenarios to get the process for identifying signs/symptoms down pat, assessing the patient, and treating them.

The last night of the course we were due for another mock scenario: a mass casualty incident caused by a hot air balloon crash. Friends and family of the instructors were strewn out in the woods with fake injuries/illnesses.

They really played the part…

Our group of eight was divided into 4 groups of 2. One group was sent out as a triage team, then the rest of us would follow.

My buddy and I were sent out first to a man who was unresponsive. Blood on his head from landing on a tree stump and he was pulseless. A few rounds of CPR and nothing worked, so we moved on to the next patient…

A 16/YO girl who had a compound femur fracture (bone sticking out of the skin) and she complained of difficulty breathing. We quickly improvised a splint for her femur fracture with a set of trekking poles, a sam splint, sleeping pad, and triangle bandages. Of course, we wrapped the wound beforehand.

Her chest pain was bad though…

Turns out she had flail chest (when a section of ribs break free from the rest and move freely) and a possible pneumothorax (when air enters the pleural cavity and begins to restrict the heart and lungs).

I sat there with her long enough to take seven sets of vitals over the course of the exercise.

Luckily, she was stable enough to not have to be evac’d right away. The other patients had more critical injuries like a pelvic fracture (with lots of internal bleeding) and an evisceration (when the abdomen is cut and organs begin to stick out).

Hypothermia and hypoglycemia were among the other conditions to deal with…

It was chaotic - other students were freaking out, a “patient” was acting drunk and messing with people, and the number of “patients” was hard to deal with.

Overall, our group made the right choices for the situation.

We evacuated the right patients at the right time with the right set of resources (a chopper and 2 ambulances). Our treatments were pretty good and our coordination was decent.

The best thing to take away from it all was this: Be cool.

Do what you can with what you have and do it cooly.

It was a great exercise to test our skills on the final full day of our course. High stress and chaos, but fun. After completing that course and becoming a wilderness first responder I feel 100% more competent as an EMT.

The Near Future

Learning and work is ahead.

The 4-6 week tour of duty with the IP geophysics crew and wildfires means there probably won’t be much time to go into great detail in these updates but, nonetheless, I will continue to update you on what’s going on.

This year has been interesting, but we haven’t seen the half of it yet.

More to come…

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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

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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.