'Southern 2021
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lifelong learner<br />
Christian Strevy ’10<br />
Christian Strevy, who earned a BFA in art at Birmingham-<br />
Southern College in 2010, strongly exemplifies the school’s value of<br />
lifelong learning.<br />
He has a wide, ever-growing range of interests, including plants,<br />
animals, insects, and geology.<br />
And Strevy – now a Philadelphia-based filmmaker – is also hosting<br />
a series of YouTube videos to explore these interests and share them<br />
with the world.<br />
The series, “Old Scout,” began in 2018 by depicting Strevy’s quest to<br />
earn all the merit badges from Cub Scout to Eagle Scout in one year.<br />
That quest stemmed from Strevy’s regrets about dropping out of Cub<br />
Scouts when he was 10 years old. He quit before he had a chance to<br />
enjoy the outdoor scouting activities, such as camping, he had come to<br />
love as an adult.<br />
Strevy successfully completed that initial one-year stage of the “Old<br />
Scout” series in 2019.<br />
And Strevy – along with series co-creator and fellow BSC graduate<br />
Julie St. John ’11 – resumed “Old Scout” in 2020 after a pandemicinduced<br />
hiatus.<br />
The project began with Strevy wondering if he could complete all<br />
the merit badges in one year.<br />
“It was a little bit of a stunt,” he said.<br />
But “Old Scout” became something more.<br />
Strevy and St. John, who earned a BFA in 2011, have continued the<br />
series because it’s an entertaining way to explore subjects they have<br />
“strong curiosity” about, Strevy said.<br />
A Vestavia Hills native, Strevy earned an MFA in film in 2015<br />
from Temple University in Philadelphia. At Temple, he made a web<br />
series, “Gunner Jackson,” that was shown at numerous film festivals,<br />
including Sidewalk Film Festival in Birmingham.<br />
Strevy began “Old Scout” on his 30th birthday, June 14, 2018, and<br />
a year later, he filmed an episode that was based on an Eagle Scout<br />
graduation. For that episode, Strevy, St. John, and friends staged a<br />
pinewood derby, the wood-car racing event popular in scouting.<br />
Strevy said he and St. John like the old Boy Scouts curriculum from<br />
the 1950s and before.<br />
“It was more experiment-based or adventure-based,” he said.<br />
In the newer curriculum, the rocks and minerals merit badge book,<br />
for example, “is more like a book report,” Strevy said. In the old<br />
curriculum, scouts were told to collect 25 rocks and minerals in the field.<br />
Making the episodes “is a great way to start hobbies and learn about<br />
science.” For example, he started collecting insects and is making an<br />
episode about them. He even became interested in stamp collecting.<br />
“We did that episode, and I realized they’re tiny, beautiful, little<br />
engraved works of art that you put on mail,” Strevy said.<br />
Since restarting “Old Scout,” Strevy and St. John have made two<br />
more episodes.<br />
St. John does “the tedious, hard work of producing the episodes,”<br />
Strevy said, while he directs and does most of the editing.<br />
“We’re just doing them at our own pace and taking our time doing<br />
them, which is really fun,” Strevy said.<br />
OLD SCOUT<br />
Follow along as Christian Strevy completes the entire<br />
curriculum of Scouts from Cub to Eagle in one year.<br />
From knot-tying to safe hiking to a pinewood derby<br />
finale, find out if an old scout can learn new tricks in<br />
this 45-episode series.<br />
Old<br />
Scout<br />
64 / ’southern