#everyone forgot about my pile of sticks when another girl opened up the ice cream cake she brought

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Okay, since I found the pictures, I'll elaborate.

After reading The Martian, my class was given the option for extra credit. The project? A slideshow about serving in the wilderness after a plane crash. The extra credit? Build a scale model of a real type of lean-to survival shelter.

I needed that extra credit.

As expected, a few days before it was due, groups started turning in their models. A popsicle stick hut, a lego interpretation of a lean-to shelter. Several others made of various craft supplies. Could I have gone the craft supply route? Yes, yes I could have.

But I didn't.

I was not then--and barely am now-- confident with a glue gun. So, I made mine out of nature. I was also a horrible procrastinator (which I had the adhd to blame, but I didn't know that yet).

8pm: I venture outside. There's a bit of forest behind my house, but it's on a hill. It was also December, as it was the night before the end of the semester.

Crunch time.

I'm outside in rain boots and a winter coat, collecting sticks, grass, and rocks in a bucket.

Success.

Back inside I construct this monstrosity: the best I could do with what I had. It's a debris hut, made with no glue whatsoever. The only parts that aren't from outside are the cardboard base and the paper towel roll in place of a log.

(pics under read more)

I finished around midnight.

Cool, right? Yeah, I thought so, too.

I still had to get it to school. My english class was the last period of the day.

Somehow, it survived the car ride to school...and the walk to my first period class. Luckily, my French teacher let me leave in in the Language office all day.

To get it to class, I had to transport it up a whole flight of stairs. Did I mention I didn't use glue? Miraculously, I get this thing to class, and everyone stares at me while I place this thing on the teacher's desk.

One guy asked, "How far into the woods did you go?" I think they were impressed. I felt a little bad about going overboard when I heard their reactions, but only because I knew that their projects were smaller and more normal, and that they paled in comparison to my overachieving-once-in-a-blue-moon ass's all natural debris hut.

Throwback to last semester when I showed up everyone in my English class with a pile of sticks...