Applying for Membership
We encourage people who think there is a realistic chance that they might wish to become members within 6 months of their visitor period to have a membership interview. You can always decide not to join, but if you skip the interview, you can not join without repeating the 3 week visit. These interviews are scheduled in the 2nd or 3rd week of your visit and are about 2.5 hours long. You should request interview on your labor sheet for your 2nd or 3rd week.
In the interview you get to tell your life story and we ask you a number of questions about how you will fit into community. Three people from CMT interview one applicant (you).
At the end of your 3 week visit, even if you are sure you want to live here (in fact especially if you are sure you want to live here) we ask you to leave for one month while we decide and you think it over. (In cases of hardship, you can request that the time be shortened to ten days and we can help you find a place to go for those ten days.) There are three possible responses from us: 1) Accepted, 2) Visit Again, 3) Reject. If you get a, "visit again," we may say we wish you to wait a certain amount of time before returning. With all these responses you will also hear a summary of the positive and negative comments about our experience of you.
The Typical Visitor Period
Many visitors go through a somewhat dramatic cycle of emotions during their visitor period - you might experience something like this:
Week 1 - Elation. This place is great, look at all the possibilities and great things here, I really want to live here, it is nearly paradise.
Alternatively, Confusion. It isn't Kansas anymore, Dorothy. What are all these crazy rules and norms and sheets and abbreviations? I will never figure out this strange place.
Week 2 - Disappointment. This is not what I was expecting at all, perhaps I have made a terrible mistake in coming. There is so much potential here, but they are just not making it happen.
Week 3 - Sad to leave. Actually, there are some pretty great people here, and I have finally figured out the their system, I am getting pretty good at making hammocks and the other systems now, just as I have to leave. Damn.