I've gone ahead and removed the duplicate submission (as well as the question asking about how to do so). Right now users can't delete posts, but it should all be taken care of now.

As to your question, you've got two options:

Sign up for Patreon now for the "Casual Student" tier. It comes with 1 credit per month, costs $5 USD. That'll be charged up-front, and you'll get your credit so you can submit your Lesson 1 work immediately. You'll get your feedback for it within a day or two, most likely. Technically you should have submitted your Lesson 1 work and gotten it critiqued before moving onto the 250 box challenge.

Assuming your Lesson 1 work is acceptable, you'll have it marked as complete and will be sent onto the 250 box challenge. Getting the box challenge critiqued and marked as complete will also be necessary in order to be moved onto lesson 2.

You will be charged again on June 1st, which will come with another credit. As DVS6H pointed out, you will be required to wait a minimum of 2 weeks before your next submission for official critique. Once that cool down period has passed, you'll be able to use that second credit your received to submit the box challenge.

Alternatively, you can wait until June 1st or later to sign up on Patreon. In this case, if you sign up for the Casual Student tier, you'll only have the 1 credit to submit Lesson 1, and won't get your next credit until July 1st. You could however sign up for the "Student" tier (which costs $7/month), which like the other tier, comes with 1 credit per month, but also includes 1 "bonus" credit upon sign-up. It's basically there to entice students to sign up at a higher tier, so all higher tiers include bonus credits up-front.

If you go with the $7 tier on June 1st, you'd get 2 credits upon sign-up, which would get you enough to submit your Lesson 1 work and your box challenge work within the month of June (you'd still have to wait the 2 weeks in between submissions, of course). Then you'd be charged again on July 1st, and would receive another credit then.

There is one other thing to keep in mind about this second option however. Patreon tends to get bogged down in its payment processing during the first few days of the month (especially for new pledges), which can result in delays in the credits being handed out. They're generally resolved within a day or two, but that is something to be aware of. Pledging on June 1st, depending on how bogged down Patreon gets, may not result in you getting your credits until June 2nd or 3rd.

So to summarize your options:

• If you pledge right now at $5 USD, you'll end up spending about $10 USD total (plus whatever sales tax) between now and the beginning of the next month, and will get your first credit more or less immediately (give or take a few minutes, an hour at most), and your next credit at the beginning of June. You'll be able to submit your Lesson 1 work, and assuming it's all fine, you'll be able to submit your box challenge work 2 weeks later.

• If you pledge on June 1st, depending on which tier you choose, you can receive 1 credit ($5 tier) or 2 credits ($7 tier). There may however be a delay in getting those credits of a day or two. Then you'll be charged for that tier again on the 1st of July and every subsequent month until you cancel.

I do strongly recommend that you stop working on the 250 box challenge until you get your Lesson 1 work marked as complete, to ensure that whatever remaining boxes you have left to do incorporate any feedback you may receive. You mentioned you were almost done with it - in circumstances where students have completed the box challenge ahead of time, we don't require them to redo the whole thing, but we do ask that they have at least 50 boxes that were done more recently, after getting their Lesson 1 feedback, so the critique you receive is based on work that is as current as possible.