My Life service project was done at a widow's house on the edge of town. I took my patrol out and we cleared the brush for a 300 foot radius from her home. She had a farm with a barn and field around the house. The brush had grown fairly heavy and we had lots of brush fires (1970) in the area.
I think the Wilderness Survival badge would be an excellent upgrade to the required Eagle badges. It is a very useful skill. Many of those skills were traditionally part of the 2nd and 1st class requirements.
Seems like mostly around here they call it service time. For Star he worked a few days at a food bank - his idea, and he used the same work for his Community badge so the time was well-spent.
He signed up to work at a fundraiser breakfast or something, and our troop gives credit on service time for Scouting for Food. Both of those will happen after he reaches Star this coming Sat. That should give him 4 hours at least.
Which other merit badges did you earn? My son loves to look at the older merit badge names. It sure tells you a lot about our society and how it has changed to look at the merit badges for each generation.
You're certainly not alone. One of the reasons we're going to just get it and be done with it is so that we don't get hit with it as a requirement at the last minute.
I think Cooking MB should be required for Eagle, myself.
Thanks for the suggestion yesterday. I spoke with my son about it. Last night he made arrangments to do the first 4 requirements of Communications this Sat. with his MBC.
He's doing this one with the troop advancement chair because it looks so difficult in terms of arrangements.