The population of Hale County tripled on April 27th, 2019 for the annual Pig Roast; a day to celebrate the collective work of the studio and the “graduation” of the current fifth year teams. At least 100 cars, carrying family and friends, caravaned around Hale County to get a brief update on each of the current projects. The caravan visited 11 projects in 11 hours, kept on schedule by our own drummer boy, Alex Therrien.

We were the first stop, at 9:00am sharp. With only 15 minutes to present, it was quite a challenge to decide what we wanted to show. After briefly thanking those who have supported us, we introduced the project, and then allowed people to meander about the site to experience the ceiling mockup and visit boards scattered throughout that went into details on certain aspects of the project: community involvement, the history of the park, structure, and construction process. We also had the newly completed truss on site to show the start to the project!

With empowerment from Anderson Inge and our professors here at Rural, we dove head first into the real world and built a 1:1 truss, in one and a half days. The truss is an accumulation of the knowledge we’ve acquired from scaled structural tests and intuition. It was 4’ in depth and 44’ long, it took a village to move it by hand from the workshop to the 16’ trailer and then over to site where it rests safely. We’re looking forward to running some structural calculations on it in the future.

After our 15 minutes of fame we hopped into the caravan and had a jam-packed and amazing day exploring and learning more about the work done by our peers. In the early evening we landed back in Newbern, in the amphitheater. We ended the day with music, a roasted pig, and a “celebration” of the students (through mockery).

To sum it up for you all, our year level is a little boring, a little exclusive, and like each other a little too much. As a team, we’ve been dubbed the sass queens of Rural Studio. In addition to telling anybody who will listen that we are an all girls team, we’re hard working, confident, and determined; we don’t tolerate any BS (Andrew’s words not ours). It was an evening full of laughs, friendship, and celebration ending in a fireworks show of epic proportions. We loved having our families experience some of the magic here at Rural Studio.

What’s next? With our diplomas in hand we’re all heading off to our new lives and jobs! Just kidding, of course. Now that the heat has arrived in Newbern, we’ve been sweating for a few days in Red Barn to hammer out a few final decisions before moving onto the construction site!

Sincerely, your favorite recent Auburn grads: the Moundville Ladies