Cob: experience is overrated -- an eight-year-old with a cookbook could do this stuff!

[Donna Strow]

Dear Coblist Buddies,

I learned the value of experience when I went to a Natural Building
workshop.  Experience gives you clout, and it teaches you that ... there
isn't much more to be said for experience in Natural Building!!  The
workshop consisted of classes and practica.  The classes were instructive
but the practica were monotinous and hardly at all instructive.

Yet, because I participated in the practica, I now have the clout to tell my
family and my neighbors that, yes, I can do this, and, yes, I can teach them
how.  I also have the clout to tell them that there's little I can teach
them outside of a classroom...

Which is a real bummer, because I thought I was going to make a living
offering hands-on instruction workshops.  Now I'm wondering ... how can I do
this?  I'm not Tom Sawyer.  Can I ask my neighbors to *pay* to work on my
barn?  Might they value the experience more than I, such that  it would
actually be reasonable to charge them for the priviledge?

So perhaps I should charge for classroom instruction and offer free practica
with the caveat that I appreciate everyone's help and that, again,
experience is overrated and all they really need to do is take their class
notes home and build their own barns!

Donna Strow