Professor Nathan Xavier
January 04, 2019 1:42 PM
First Year Orientation by Professor Nathan Xavier
Nathan was up far too early this morning, and it had nothing to do with his duties as Head of House or even orienting the first years. Students weren't arriving until afternoon, after all. No, his lack of sleep, and the resultant bags under his eyes were caused by have an almost three month old living in his family's quarters, which had seemed quite spacious when they set them up last midterm but seemed less so when trying to walk a squalling infant to sleep at 2am.He probably should have let Gray do the Orientation again, but Nathan considered it his job; he'd done it most of the years since Orientation had been implemented, and he'd promised Selina keeping a baby on premises wouldn't interfere with his or Isis' work. Besides, he'd missed doing it last year due to wedding preparations, and he didn't want to miss it two years in a row.
So he tried to be mostly cheerful and welcoming rather than exhausted looking as each new batch of students got off the flying covered wagons that had brought them to Sonora from all over the country. He directed the first years off into the garden to where the Orientation was set up with tables of snacks, plenty of room to mingle with each other, and a stack of folders with important information about the school, including a map. Everyone else was welcome to head on into the school, where the library, Cascade Hall, and the common rooms were all available for them to use to entertain themselves until the Opening Feast that evening.
Soon all the wagons were accounted for, and the school's prairie elves had dealt with the luggage and putting the flying wagons away in their shed. He followed the last group of first years into the orientation area, and gave them a few minutes to pick up food and a folder.
Soon enough, though, he cleared his throat to gain their attention.
"Hello, students. Welcome to your first year at Sonora Academy. My name is Professor Xavier." He was trying to keep his sentences short and simple; partly because he was tired and they could easily drift into long rambling things that even he couldn't follow if they went on too long, and partly because they had a few foreign students for whom English was not their first language. "I am the Herbology teacher here. In a little while, I'll give you a tour of your new school, but first, a few words about it."
"Sonora Academy of Magic is a seven year secondary school. We teach Charms, Transfiguration, Potions, Herbology, Care of Magical Creatures, and Defense against the Dark Arts as our core classes. You'll be taking each of those for five years. You will begin with beginner level classes. Beginner classes continue into second year. This allows you to get to know and work with people who were in your place last year. As first years only, you’ll also take Flying Lessons. In third year, you will move up to intermediate classes. At that point, you can add elective classes and independent studies to your course load, if you want. The core classes continue to be required. Intermediate classes continue through fifth year. Your first major exam, called the CATS - the Critical Assessment of Talents and Skills, is at the end of fifth year. After the CATS, you may drop some of your courses so you may better focus on the ones you decide to pursue at an Advanced level. Your last major exam, the RATS - the Ridiculously Anal Testing of Skills, is at the end of your seventh year. You need to pass two RATS to graduate, and most colleges require a minimum of three. Obviously, that's still a long way off, but that's the overview of academics here at Sonora. You should have your schedule for beginner lessons in the green folders. If you didn't get one, they are over there," he pointed to the appropriate table. "If you need help with English or math, please tell your Head of House. Sonora offers an academic assistance program for anyone who needs it for any reason." Reasons could and have included anything from growing up in a circus with little formal education to being a non-native speaker of English. "Also, each professor will offer office hours if you need help in a specific subject."
"For extracurricular activities, Sonora has a number of student led clubs, including a Dueling club, an Orchestra, a Gardening club, an Art club, and a school newspaper called the Aronos. If you don't like those, you can always make your own. We also have a school wide Quidditch team that competes with other schools. First years are welcome to try-out, but you'll likely be on the reserve team. For those who don't know, Quidditch is a wizarding sport played on broomsticks." He realized his sentences were getting longer, but he couldn't figure out how to get them any shorter, now that they were past basic introductions. He compensated by trying to talk slower.
"After the tour, you will be sorted into Houses. You will receive a badge, which you will dip into a potion, and it will come out one of four colors. Blue means Aladren. Aladrens tend to value learning and problem-solving. Yellow means Teppenpaw. Teppenpaws are our diplomats, valuing friendship and personal development. Red means Crotalus. They believe in respectability, responsibility, and strategic planning. Brown means Pecari. Those students are often adventurous and adaptable. Not everyone fits neatly into one House or another, so try not to put too much stock into House stereotypes. There are smart Crotali and adventurous Teppenpaws. There are adaptable Pecaris who aren't adventurous. But everybody will be sorted into one of them. This is a boarding school, so you'll have a Head of House who you will look out for you and serve as your adult guardian while you're here. We're a small school, so you may need to share a room with anyone else in your year matching your House and gender. Each House also has three prefects who are appointed to help you with any trouble you may have. Your House can earn points for your good deeds and exemplary class work. Likewise getting in trouble can lose your House points. The House with the most points at the end of the year wins the House Cup to display in their Commons the following year, and may earn extra perks at the end-of-year midsummer event. Pecari will be hosting it this year."
He mentally ran through the important topics one more time and thought he'd hit most of them - it was his eighth time doing this, and he was proving he could just about do it in his sleep. "That's about it. Wear school robes with your House badge to class. The Cascade Hall serves breakfast from 6:30 to 8:30, lunch from eleven to one, and dinner from five to seven. Those times should also be on your schedules. Between those times, you can get smaller things like sandwiches and snacks. It opens at six and closes at ten. Ten PM to six AM is curfew; you should be in your House areas during that time. Unless there are any questions, you are free to chat and get to know each other until the tour, which kicks off at 5:30."
OOC (Out of Character):
Welcome first years to Sonora! You can post a reply here to ask staff questions or meet your new classmates. This thread is intended for first year students to have a chance to try out posting and get acclimated to the site before we throw you into the big Opening Feast, which is open to the entire school population and can be a bit overwhelming.
Please remember that anything that happened in the Sandbox was just practice and did not actually occur. (You are welcome, of course, to use any background information you generated about your character during these exercises such as pets, accidental magic, etc, but they have not yet spent any time at Sonora, or interacted with any classmates.)
Also of note, entering your email address when you reply will mean you get notified when someone responds. This is optional but can be useful for helping to keep track of posts. Please do NOT check the box that says 'show email address,' as this will make it public and may result in spam. Please note, that lately some reply notifications have been ending up in spam folders of email accounts. Please check your spam folders and the boards if you think you are not receiving replies
Now, go forth, new first years of Sonora! Post, enjoy, have fun! Everyone here is happy to help out, so if you've got a question, put it on the OOC board or try to catch somebody in the Chatzy and we'll try to get you an answer as quick as we can. Have fun and we’re glad you could join us!
Subthreads: I don't speak English by Hilda Hexenmeister with Johanna Leonie Zauberhexen
This all sounds very adequate. by Felipe De Matteo with Jeremy Mordue
Be yourself - everyone else is already taken by Zara Jackson with Beatriz Couthon
I see a few small problems on the horizon. by Jessica Hayles with Jake "JD" Daniels
Do I spy a familiar face? [Tag Isabella Harrington] by Theodore Flores with Isabella Harrington
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Professor Nathan Xavier
First Year Orientation
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Professor Nathan Xavier
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Jessica Hayles
January 07, 2019 3:47 PM
I see a few small problems on the horizon. by Jessica Hayles
Today was not the first time Jessica had ever been in the air. With Daddy, she flew to New York to visit family on a semi-regular basis, and on special occasions he let her travel with him other places – she went on Latin American business trips sometimes to practice her Spanish, or to fashion weeks in Europe as rewards for excellence or her birthdays. Even with Mommy, who did not like to go far from home, she had taken short plane rides to south Georgia to visit her Groves relatives, Great-Grandpa and Great-Grandma, who had been governor and first lady of the state, and all her aunts and uncles and cousins who lived down there around them. Flying, then, was something she was accustomed to, and so the journey to Arizona had been the one part of this going-to-wizard-school she had not been terrified of from the start. She had thought she had known what to expect.She had thought an incorrect thought.
Her already pale skin was almost white as she staggered, weak-kneed and half-sick, off the wagon, blinking away green and black stars until her brown eyes fixed on the bizarre-looking man who seemed to be giving directions. She stared blankly at him for a long moment, then blinked a few more times, rapidly, before reaching into the pale pink bag hanging from one of her wrists and emerging with a gilt compact and a matching thin tube, which looked very like a pen until she removed the cap and revealed instead the extremely slim bullet of a light pink gloss. Half as if in a trance, she opened the mirror and reapplied the gloss, her hands moving with the ease of something very close to muscle memory.
She closed the compact as automatically as she had opened it, but the click brought her back to earth, back to a higher-than-baseline-functioning awareness of her surroundings. With this awareness came a swell of fear. She was among barbarians. They travelled like that, and they had compelled her to buy a bunch of dead bug parts for a class, and their books indicated they were acutely superstitious to a man, and she was trapped here among them, at least until she could convince them she wasn’t a danger to herself and others with these abilities they claimed she had – but she had on her lip gloss. Jessica Rose was the name of the shade; Daddy had had the color she wore on her lips and nails, along with the eau de toilette she wore, blended in honor of her birth eleven years ago. Daddy always said that there wasn’t much to do about feeling bad, but that was why it was lucky it mattered less how you felt than how you looked. And compared to the guy talking, anyway, she looked really, really good. Tentatively, she took a few steps forward in the direction all the other sixth graders seemed to be heading.
The folders looked like the most important things, so she made a beeline for those and opened up one, looking for some signs of hope. She found none. When the man – Professor Xavier; oh great, it was X-Men – who had been giving directions came and started speaking, she listened closely, waiting for what she wanted to know, but she found nothing – well, almost nothing. At least it sounded like they did have some extracurricular programs, but where was Spanish Honors, or Junior Beta, and all the other sports besides the weird one that came up occasionally in the magic books? And more importantly, where the heck were the rest of their classes? She had assumed that the magic stuff was just an add-on, electives replacing her art and music and Spanish immersion classes at her old school, and that they would be given textbooks for normal subjects once they got here. That was, after all, the only logical explanation – normal classes were regulated, with standards, so of course they would use the same books she would have back at her old school, or similar. It could not really be that they expected her to study nothing but this for two years. It couldn’t be. She would get so far behind!
Her chest began to feel as though it were going to close up again. She pressed her lips together firmly. When something went wrong, one got a drink, put on a lipstick, and got the heck on with it. That was what Elizabeth Taylor had said, and while Jessica would generally not take Elizabeth Taylor as a guide for how to live her life, that statement made sense. So now she was going to go get something to drink, and then she would figure out who this adult guardian of hers was supposed to be, and she would get her schedule sorted out. They had to have her test scores and grades from her old school in Atlanta; they would have to understand that she was on an IB track and had her high school and university shortlists in development, and that as intelligent as she was, missing two years of everything she had studied up to this point would be a disaster. It would be easy to get it sorted. If she didn’t have a panic attack right now and make a spectacle of herself.
She pushed her copper-colored hair back behind her ears and walked toward to a table with what looked like fruit punch, only to have someone else get to the ladle just ahead of her. She smiled automatically. It didn’t matter how she felt, only how she looked. “Hi,” she said, with a slight southern accent. “I’m Jessica. Nice to meet you.”
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Jessica Hayles
I see a few small problems on the horizon.
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Jessica Hayles
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Jake "JD" Daniels
March 08, 2019 4:51 AM
Ahoy, matey! by Jake "JD" Daniels
Even though it totally sucked that JD wasn’t going to be able to see all his friends at this new school he was being sent to, he was excited for the adventure! It had been hard saying goodbye to his parents and his sisters, but the moment the bumpy wagon appeared in site he had been scrambling away for this new excitement, blowing his mother a kiss from the space between the flaps. It was definitely a lot rougher than a plane, or so he imagined (aside from the occasional road trip out to Boston to watch a baseball game, JD had never really left his town, much less Maine), but he didn’t really care. JD liked roller coasters, this was sort of like a roller coaster, ie: FUN.His suitcase, packed with all the essentials he thought he needed - of course he brought his prize baseball, bat, and mitt, did they think he wouldn’t? - was stuffed under his seat and he laughed the whole way there. Arizona, how exciting!
When JD finally tumbled off the wagon, he was ushered towards a large garden with, who he assumed, were the other sixth graders. Wow, so cool. He looked around - the bushes were tall. They reminded him of the corn maze at the state fair. JD loved a good corn maze. He wondered if there was a prize for whoever completed this one. But the teacher-person who was addressing them now seemed to want his attention so he refocused to the front. There would be plenty of time to figure the corn maze out later.
He didn’t even notice the table of folders until after he noticed everyone else already had one but he figured that there would be enough for everyone so he could just grab it on the way out. Besides, Professor Xavier (how cool was that name?!) was giving them the low down. JD was sure that all the information he’d need to know would be in that talk. Why bother reading something if someone with the coolest name ever could just tell him? After the talk finished, with JD conveniently tuning out at the mention of school uniforms, he headed to the refreshments table. Neat.
There were so many options to choose from, he had no idea where to start, but after looking at all the delicious food items available, JD realized his throat was absolutely parched. Probably a good idea to get something to drink then. He reached out for the ladle to the fruit punch, only to knock a young lady out of the way. How rude of him. JD dropped the ladle and stepped back. “Jake Daniels,” he replied, flashing his dimples. His mother had told him it was appropriate to introduce himself with his full name and not his nickname and so he was doing that. For his mother. “Ladies first. Would you like me to pour you a glass?”
JD had been taught growing up that manners were important, especially when dealing with girls. He couldn’t be rough with them, not how he was with his friends. Growing up with a bunch of sisters made him question that, sometimes, since girls could be mean, but then again it did sort of make sense. His sisters never went out wrestling on the sand dunes or fighting with clamming shovels like they were swords.
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Jake "JD" Daniels
Ahoy, matey!
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Jake "JD" Daniels
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Jessica
March 13, 2019 2:26 PM
I'm supposed to be in training to become a captain. by Jessica
A gentleman. Jessica’s smile grew slightly warmer at the display of courtesy. She was used to adult men waiting on her (both because they were employees and because Mommy said this was how gentlemen behaved toward girls who conducted themselves like ladies), but boys at school, not so much. She was accustomed to opening her own doors and pulling out her own chairs at school, so this was a pleasant change.“That would be nice,” she said. “Thank you.”
Maybe everyone here wouldn’t be too bad. Nothing she had seen indicated that here was a remotely appropriate place to stay after she got better, but maybe at least the other student-patients would be tolerable company until she was well enough to go home.
“So, how long have you known you’d have to come here?” she asked Jake, figuring that their condition was the one thing they almost certainly had in common. Why would anyone get on that wagon if they were not under compulsion to do so? Daddy had been cursing like a sailor under his breath when he saw the thing; she had to assume that the awful little man who had ruined their whole summer had threatened him and Mommy in some way, because otherwise, she couldn’t imagine they would have ever allowed her on such a rickety piece of junk at all, never mind for purposes of flying.
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Jessica
I'm supposed to be in training to become a captain.
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Jessica
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JD
March 20, 2019 5:11 AM
Well then, let me salute you. by JD
The girl whose hand he had pushed out of the way acquiesced to his suggestion and JD felt proud of himself for making her smile. He loved making girls smile. He loved making anyone smile, really, but found that girls in particular had very charming smiles. He dipped the ladle in the punch bowl, carefully pouring one glass for his new classmate and handed it to her before pouring himself one. The juice splashed slightly over his hand so, perhaps in not his most distinguished move, JD lifted his hand to his mouth to lick off the extra juice. Courteous he may have been, but an 11-year-old boy he was also.He shrugged in response to her question. “Seems like my whole life,” he said, glad he finally had someone outside of his family to talk about it. “They assigned a nanny to watch over me since I was two ‘cause I’m the only one in my family like this and my magic was just…” JD’s hands mimed an explosion. “They were worried I’d expose everything, I guess.”
He shrugged. It really hadn’t been that bad, and Rose had become part of the family. He smiled softly thinking of the mild-mannered nanny who had so lovingly taken care of him. Aside from not being able to talk to his friends about his powers, JD had never felt like he was on the outside of anything. Rose had always told him that he was like one of those superheroes in the comics he liked to read so much. Special, but couldn’t tell anyone why. JD liked thinking of himself like a boy Superman.
“What about you?”
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JD
Well then, let me salute you.
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JD
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Jessica
March 20, 2019 11:50 AM
I like you. by Jessica
His whole life. Jessica knew her eyes widened slightly, though that could be excused too by JD’s description of why he had required a keeper for as long as he could remember.“Oh wow,” she said, her soft accent making the phrase sound slightly breathless.
She wondered how that must feel. Carmela was an employee, technically, but - well, it was complicated, but for various reasons, including but not limited to Carmela taking care of her all her life, Jessica essentially regarded her nanny as a second mother. It had been Carmela she had felt it was all right to go to on the occasions over the past two months when she hadn’t been able to stop crying - or, indeed, occasions before she had found out about all this, less serious things in retrospect, but still things where Mommy and Daddy would have told her to pull herself together instead of singing to her and stroking her hair until she was all cried out. She couldn’t imagine a life where Carmela was part of the problem….
“Two months,” she said when asked how long she had known. “It was all so awful - we already had all my classes and clubs for this year picked out, and we were just coming back from vacation when...this happened.” For a moment, she stared straight ahead, disbelieving still, but she brought her eyes back into focus quickly. “But, the greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it, right?” This was said with a cheerful smile. “That’s what Daddy always says, anyway.”
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Jessica
I like you.
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Jessica
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