Over the last 2 years, there has been a lot of curiosity and questions revolving around a crazy decision my fiancée, Brendan Doe and I made in September of 2015. For those of you who don’t know what that decision was, let me tell you: it was the craziest decision we have ever made, but also one of the most rewarding.

This is the story of how two people went camping for 16 weeks in the middle of winter in the mountains of Ojai. “Why,” you ask? Because one of them wanted to graduate from college. Over the next couple of weeks I am going to be sharing with you our adventures, or misadventures as it were, in completing my education.

First I should probably tell you how this started. To do that, I have to tell you about one of the most heartbreaking decisions I have ever had to make.

It was fall of 2013, just one semester from graduation at Brooks Institute of Photography in lovely Santa Barbara, CA, where we had only just recently moved into a room in an aging house just off State Street, which had sounded like the ideal location what with it being within easy walking distance from the campus and in the middle of the downtown area. (Totally not slums, right?)

The house wasn’t much, even though we were paying a king’s ransom for it, and we shared the house with nine others: a Russian blonde who loved smoothies and boys, three Brazilian boys who spoke not a word of English but loved to party well into the early hours of night while playing the one and only CD of Bob Marley they owned on repeat at a deafening volume, a single yet responsible bartender who was actually pretty cool, and a health coach who actually was pretty chill when she wasn’t bringing home her flavor of the night to test the thickness of our walls or her team of giggly girlfriends who loved talking loudly about boys and drunkenly shouting “VAGINA!!!” at 2am. No, we’re not kidding. We secretly named them Team Girl Squad; it seemed fitting with their high-pitched voices and constant giggling.

Oh, and then there was us, the young couple attempting to thrive as creative professionals in their chosen art: Brendan, my significant other who had just graduated from my same school with a BFA in Graphic Design, and me; a young photographic artist on the verge of graduation.

Our experience there was a heady combination of chasing the Brazilian boys out of the girls’ rooms when they became too drunk to understand the word “NO,” to the tune of various orgasmic screams from Team Girl Squad mixing delicately with the soothing tones of Bob Marley Playing Way Too Loud before Miss Russia came bouncing down the stairs yelling at everyone in a thick accent to “Shut the f*** up already, you’re freaking me out!!!” Meanwhile, the place was a disaster, with the landlord constantly renovating at the drop of the hat leaving the occupants waking up to a construction zone with no notice, but somehow ignoring the cat-sized rats. The only response to our concerns about them was something like, “This is Santa Barbara; there are rats, right? I suggest you invest in a cat.” Right; so pay a pet deposit to take care of your problems? Not happening, buddy.

To say it was interesting is putting it mildly.

At that time, Brendan and I were both freelancing to supplement the meager income and even worse tips I was getting from my job grooming dogs at the local Petco; however, even with a generous financial gift we were getting from Brendan’s dad every month to help cover rent we were only just barely getting by. Add in my crazy school schedule, and it’s no small wonder we didn’t go insane.

Then, as hilariously tragic as our lives had already gotten, tragedy struck: the scholarship that was keeping me in school simply vanished. The school, with no reasoning offered despite in the past having repeatedly reassured me was always available as a resource for students in need, was simply no longer offering it. Our situation was dire: we were running out of funds fast, and with the discontinuation of my scholarship I was short over $3000 on my last semester’s tuition. We had hit a wall, and it was a big one.

Without school keeping us in the area there was no reason to stay, so I did what any broke college student does when finding themselves out of options: I called home. By that semester’s end, we had turned in our 30 days notice and packed our bags for Arizona.

It broke my heart to leave, but we swore it would only be for a season until we could save up enough funds for me to graduate.

Two years passed, and finally I couldn’t wait anymore. No matter what we had done, we just couldn’t save up enough money fast enough. Sure, we had managed to get the initial $3000, but there was still no way we could afford rent in the area. Our crappy room in downtown Santa Barbara had cost over $1000 a month, and we couldn’t see ending up in a situation like that ever again.

I desperately wanted to graduate. I needed to prove to myself I could. So, one mostly-drunken night, I hatched a crazy plan. To my surprise, after some mostly-sober logistical debate, my by-then fiancée I’d been on this crazy ride with this whole time agreed with me. What I had decided was this: I had decided (“don’t look at me like that, I’ve only had two glasses! Maybe three…”) that we would camp. Continuously. For 16 weeks: the length of one semester.

Everyone warned us this was crazy, and they were right; this is borderline one of the stupidest things we have ever done, but we were serious. This was our ticket, our one shot at getting my degree.

We immediately started planning: Where would we go? How would we do this? Brendan took my little slightly beat-up (Runs great! Just don’t mind the rust…) Ford Aerostar minivan and starting taking measurements. To my chagrin, our queen-sized bed fit perfectly between the driver seat and the back door. It took Brendan a week or so to build a raised platform that would not only support our queen mattress but would also allow for ample storage space underneath, which would have been perfect; the downside was that we had maybe a foot and a half of space between the surface of the mattress and the ceiling of the van. It was comfy-ish, but to say the space was claustrophobic would definitely be an understatement. This was in no way an ideal arrangement; we would have to crawl several feet up to get in and out of the space, risking life and limb if heaven forbid you had to half-asleep get up to pee in the middle of the night. Despite that, our stuff all fit and after a few nights of sleeping in it in the driveway this solution seemed “usable”.

A month flew by, during which Brendan and I gave notices to both our jobs, and before we knew it our adventure was about to begin. We loaded up the van with everything we owned that we thought we would need over the next 16 weeks.  Whatever didn’t fit under the bed ended up strapped to the roof, including a tent (in case we decided the claustrophobic space was too much for us), a camping stove, a 5-gallon jug of water (We’re crossing the desert, yo), a cooler filled with nearly all of our kitchen supplies including spices and food, and (nearly literally) all of our eggs in one basket.

Just like that, we were ready; or so we thought.

What could possibly go wrong? Be sure to find out next week, when disaster strikes on the road and we learn the hard way that even the best (or worst) of plans can fall apart.