A Peek Behind the Scenes at 8th Life

"Hi, I'm Maja - a full time resident of 8th Life - and I am a new administrator for the Academy - perhaps you have already met me through emails :) I've been working in this capacity now for some 8 months, love it, and thought to tell you something about it. I ran into the Integral Permaculture Academy about two years ago and since then I've been slowly advancing, starting with studying the Manual, MiniCourses and then - thanks to a year-long intense internship funded by EVS- I had the chance to do the full iPDC course (am now on the Diploma pathway). In this way I got closer to tutors and other students.
Having a very inspiring vision of the Academy constantly in mind, I wanted to be a part of this and help in making this happen. To build a lively community of people working together towards building a permanent culture - what a juicy purpose! And so I started helping with small admin tasks, slowly becoming more and more involved.
Now I handle all the emails and applications, adding new students to the system, juggling all the data that we have and - one of the most exciting jobs for now - helping with the re- design of the Academy. It's a big endeavour and we have a great team for that.
The rest of the time I am the animals coordinator at an ecovillage project - the Sheperdess, mainly :) (Follow this link to my new FB page on Holistic Grazing.)
You might think that doing admin work is boring. And technically you would be right, since in most cases, it?s a very repetitive job of clicking, copying and writing. But I love it; not only because I can do it in my lovely room, while having a foot bath, looking at the sunset over the ocean and listening to nice music, but also because I always keep the big picture in mind: I know I am contributing to an amazing educational project which is supporting people all over the world are making positive change - and that makes the work exciting.
Copying old class comments from students, and seeing how engaged they have been makes me really inspired, as well as seeing the history of how the community has been built and the discussions that were going on. Finding testimonies in these comments makes me satisfied because that so many students received from the courses exactly what we wanted them to have, and more. Archiving data from their old design portfolios fascinates me because I see with the variety of amazing people that were brought together by the Academy and it makes me wonder about how much more we are able to create in the future. Copying hundreds of links for the database to make re-recording of classes easier makes me super excited about this challenge we took on. I can already see how much better we will be able to reach people by refreshing the material.
Being a support person for brilliant and creative people that are steering this ship is a privilege and joy!"