Do sore thumbs really stick out? on Library

Mr. Killian Row

April 22, 2019 5:18 PM

Skill Exploration [Intermediates] by Mr. Killian Row

Killian had spent his break feeling like it wasn't really a break at all. He'd been mostly ready for the start of Fall term, but hadn't had nearly enough information. As a result, his Christmas had largely consisted of him gathering new information about schools, careers, job openings, internships, and even home listings and apartments in magical neighborhoods. He was exhausted by the time he returned to Sonora, but the return was invigorating somehow too. It was exciting to see his hard work put to use and kept this in mind when it was time for his second Skill Exploration day of the new term.

Having reserved a place in the library for the day's meeting, Mr. Row greeted the Intermediate students as they arrived. "Hello," he grinned, greeting them with his signature half-cocked smile.

He was feeling a bit scruffy, with his black beard grown just past the point of stubble, but prided himself on a reasonably neat sort of scruff, and kept it all carefully maintained. His black hair was also carefully kept, albeit messy, and was laying tousled in its usual mop atop his head. "I know some of you are still working on projects that you've been working on when you've met with me individually, and others have some things you want me to look over, so we can work on those things today as well, but I wanted to assign you a new task as well, just for our time together today," he said once everyone had taken a seat.

“I’ve gathered some lists from other schools, from your professors, and from other places about various learning outcomes and skill milestones for each of your classes,” he explained gesturing to stacks of papers, one for each class the Intermediate students could be taking. “I also want you to take advantage of the fact that we meet in the library. Try not to bother the librarian if you don't have to, though, as I know there are other students demanding attention as well. I'm happy to help, you can work together, or you can go to the librarian if you really do need to." Logistics aside, he went on.

"Today, I want you to really think about your demonstrable skills and aptitudes. I'm going to pass around a worksheet with fifty questions that let you rank your skills in various areas on a scale of 'No Skill' to 'Adept'. Each one also has a place for you to write a short explanation of how you might demonstrate that skill. These are all pulled directly from the learning outcomes and goals for the classes you’re in now. I know that you’re all at different levels, both in what year you’re in, and in your individual strengths, so I really want to emphasize that no one can be skilled at everything. It’s okay if you don’t feel like you’re really scoring yourself very highly in many areas, and that might be a good place to start a conversation with your professors or with me.”

He passed around the worksheets with a wave of his wand, keeping one on his desk and pointing to the first question.
"An example would be something like 'decorative and creative transfiguration magic', which you could demonstrate with a live, photo examples, etc. Beyond that, think about what your skills in that area are. Are you really skilled with clothing, but not so much with dishware? What about interior design? Makeup? Think about your individual skills. I want you to take turns also demonstrating the skills that you think are safe to do in the library," he said, thinking of the curse and hexing examples, or potion-brewing examples. "Brainstorm together, take a look at some resources around the library; keep in mind that research is another skill!"

He looked around at the students, wondering if this task was going to bore them, or be too much.

"Again, I want you to get in pairs, rank your various skills from the list, and brainstorm how you can demonstrate your skills in that area. You can use each other, me, the resources I brought, or the wider library's resources to help you. Please let me know if you have any questions."

Taking his seat, Mr. Row got ready for the first wave of student needs, and smiled at those who made eye contact. He'd been told that he had the face of a jokester, and always looked as ready to laugh as anything else, and he tried to use that to put the students he worked with at ease.

OOC - Hello! This is essentially a class thread, so you can run it that way. :) Enjoy!

Subthreads:

Decorating cookies from horseback by Jasmine Delachene, Crotalus with Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari

Self-doubt is a skill I may possess in some quantity. by Nathaniel Mordue, Teppenpaw with Peyton O'Malley, Crotalus

Do sore thumbs really stick out? by Dorian Montoir, Teppenpaw with Heinrich

Exploring by Ivy Brockert,Teppenpaw

I have better things to do by Caitlin Pierce, Crotalus

22 Mr. Killian Row Skill Exploration [Intermediates] 1450 Mr. Killian Row 1 5

Jasmine Delachene, Crotalus

April 24, 2019 1:50 PM

Decorating cookies from horseback by Jasmine Delachene, Crotalus

Jasmine was taking no electives or independent studies. Being in her fourth year, she was still required to take all the core classes, though she was already looking forward to dropping Transfiguration and DADA and Potions the moment she closed the lid on her purple jar of ink after her CATS. That would leave her with Charms (if she managed to pass - Professor Wright gave out difficult assignments that left her wavering right on the line between A and P most of the time), Herbology (a solid A class for her), and Care of Magical Creatures (her best class where she averaged an E - though it varied widely between units, her skill in caring for creatures being directly proportional to her desire to care for them - and that was often proportional to how aesthetically attractive the animal in question was to her; Abraxans obviously being the top of the attractiveness scale and blast-ended skrewts being the bottom).

Despite her already firmly held plan for her future academics at Sonora, she did decide to attend the workshop Professor Row was holding for the Intermediates today, as her plan did not extend much past the beginning of sixth year other than as a vague ‘try not to fail all my RATS’ that was basically implied by the school’s requirement that students needed to pass two RATS to graduate. She thought she could probably manage that with Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures anyway. She was mostly just keeping Charms because Charms were generally useful things to know, and while her essays and theory exams often came back with Ps or worse, her practical charm casting was perfectly serviceable for everyday life.

Still, she wasn’t entirely sure what she was going to do after Sonora. Working on her Mom’s flying horse ranch had appeal - she loved those horses more than nearly anything - but she wasn’t sure that was what she wanted to do forever.

So here she was, filling out the worksheet about skills and aptitudes and wondering if she was qualified to do anything at all. She was getting an awful lot of ‘no skill’ or ‘a little skill’ answers, and precious few ‘above average skill’ and ‘adept’ answers (and she didn’t really even know what ‘adept’ meant, but she was guessing it meant ‘really amazingly skilled’ based on its placement in the skill spectrum). Sure, the professor said it was fine and normal not to have a lot of adepts, but Jasmine wasn’t sure she was supposed to have this many ‘no skill’ and ‘little skill’ answers marked.

Basically, everything she marked as average or better could be summed up as ‘basic skills for surviving without an elf to dress and feed you’, ‘somehow related to horses’, and ‘somehow related to pretending to be a princess’ none of which did she think were strongly marketable aptitudes.

Though ‘pretending to be a princess’ did include ‘pretending to be Rapunzel from Tangled’ so there were a lot of creative endeavors covered there from baking to painting to candle making. Most of those were merely average though. Jasmine felt like a bit of a failure as a pretend princess - Rapunzel was surely ‘adept’ at all of them.

She sighed heavily, and commented to the person sitting next to her, “I don’t suppose you know of any careers where people can wear princess dresses while dancing, riding horses, and decorating cookies, do you?” That would cover all her best skills and aptitudes, but she wasn’t sure they went together all that well.

1 Jasmine Delachene, Crotalus Decorating cookies from horseback 1397 Jasmine Delachene, Crotalus 0 5

Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari

April 25, 2019 8:30 PM

Seems like a good time for glitter. by Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari

Gospodin Row confused Tatiana, and not just because he sometimes used words she did not know or at least did not understand in context. Indeed, this was only a small part of what puzzled her; her English had gotten good enough that she hardly ever blurred words together, even in different accents of English, and she only occasionally fell into the traps laid by words with more than one meaning, or multiple subtle shades of meaning that did not translate well to the equivalencies shown in her Anglo-Russian dictionary. Her issue with the man was not even entirely that she could not quite figure out what it was she was supposed to be learning from him, or why these strange meetings took place in the library. Mostly, she was puzzled by why he seemed to think whatever it was he was doing with them had a point, at least for the girls in the class.

It was well enough, she supposed, for the boys to study deeply on the nature of their strengths and weaknesses, and to work to rectify the latter, and to figure out what their interests were and how they related to the strengths. This was all very proper. However, Tatiana was fairly certain that the only reason girls of her social class - that which seemed to dominate the Sonora populace - received magical education at all was that they had to learn to control their powers; otherwise, these would kill them, or at least make them dangerous to others. But the stuff they would use would be primarily basic self-care magics they had learned in Beginners, and she didn't see the point of any of this. Even poor girls - what could they do besides become seamstresses or nursemaids or teachers? Though she supposed teachers did need a bit more education, but....

Her enthusiasm for the proposed exercise was not increased by the presence of words which made her need to reach for her dictionary. She was fairly sure she had heard the word adept before, but she could not quite grasp it, offhand. And so once again, here was dense Tatiana, looking up words it was taken for granted that everyone in the class should understand. Again.

Once, she recalled, learning new words had been fun. She had enjoyed learning anything she could, and had taken pride in getting spells right when the Latin-derived words had syllables in them which she couldn't readily pronounce. Now, though, it all just seemed eminently pointless.

She stared broodingly at her paper. She had a hand, if she did say so herself, for charms and Transfiguration elements which involved things she found pretty - patterns on china and, of course, when she had the chance, jewelry. She was struggling to do some reading on metal-charming for one of Row's silly projects for that very reason. It had amused her, when she had picked the topic, to imagine what that might be like - working at something she liked very much, making it how she liked it, and earning money herself, with which she could do as she liked, instead of relying on allowances and caring about what people thought. This was not, however, at all possible - her parents would be horrified at the idea of any of their children taking up trades, but her mother might actually die if one of her daughters lowered herself that far. A jeweler had more esteem than a commercial seamstress, perhaps even than an exclusive seamstress or tailor, but not enough to justify turning one's own hands to it. They were property owners; they were supposed to have more important concerns. Sewing and painting were allowed as amusements, but Tatiana had never liked either and anyway, the floral still-lifes they were expected to produce all the time were even duller than the processes of producing them.

Logic, of course, said that life as a person who worked had to be even worse - if it had been better, why, then it would have been poor people who did not do it and Tatiana's sort of people who did. The things she did have to do were not all unpleasant, either - dancing and events, sometimes. Dancing was a good way to burn energy, and she had heard intriguing things about how energetic it could get at the bals roses and the restorans people retired to for suppers after larger and more formal events. Even formal events where behavior was sedate could have their amusements, like young men making only the most perfunctory of comments about the fine, brilliantly blue sapphire you had gotten for Christmas but saying all sorts of drivel about your person! But she still stubbornly wanted to be able to do something her own way - make it all up and out how she pleased. Which was silly - trades meant making things to please other people, just as a proper lady spent her life being something to please other people - a sort of good herself. Bother all!

A heavy sigh drew her attention to Jasmine, sitting beside her and looking no more pleased with her paper than Tatiana felt with hers. Tatiana grimaced sympathetically as Jasmine asked her question. Tatiana did not quite understand all the words, but she got the general feeling from it all.

"Maybe, if you go to tsirk," said Tatiana. "I know not your word - is where there are big animals. Lev, slon - " realizing she was speaking Russian, Tatiana took up her pencil and quickly sketched a blob with a circle for a head, huge triangles for ears, and a long snout curving toward the ground. "And people dance in air! So why not on horse? But there no cookies were," she added fairly.

16 Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari Seems like a good time for glitter. 1396 Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari 0 5

Nathaniel Mordue, Teppenpaw

April 29, 2019 10:23 PM

Self-doubt is a skill I may possess in some quantity. by Nathaniel Mordue, Teppenpaw

Nathaniel supposed it was a bit snobbish of him, but he couldn't help but wish to take a comb and a razor to the guidance counselor and give him a lecture on cutting a proper appearance. This was important for a gentleman (too much interest was bad, but untidiness was abhorrent), and while Mr. Row might not be one himself, he was charged with teaching gentlemen along with others. He ought, as someone with 'guidance' in his very job title, to set a better example.

Nathaniel, for his own part, was properly neat as he entered the library, or at least as much as his hair's occasional tendency to curl would allow him to be. He sat quietly, his hands folded, as he waited for the lesson to begin, ostensibly because this was proper, rather than because he was increasingly aware, lately, that he was somewhat lacking in the friend department outside his cousin. His green eyes were calm in his well-proportioned face as he heard the lesson for the day, this untroubled exterior concealing, as it so often did, a surge of doubt.

Demonstrable skills and aptitudes. Did he actually have those?

He attended to his duties - his lessons, and, of course, watching after Jeremy - strictly and did his best to do them perfectly, but he knew he didn't always succeed in that. He could write tolerably, a skill built by his tutors and honed through the endless piles of homework at Sonora and even more endless heaps of letters to his mother, letters which he worked hard on because he was always worried that one wrong word might prove too much for her. His favorite thing was his photographs, but though his mamma and Sylvia both praised them highly, and Tatiana Vorontsova had once offended him by offering to pay him to photograph her in her exotic Midsummer Ball costume, he could hardly count any of that as objective artistic criticism....

Potions. There he was. He was rather good at potions, if he did say so himself - he had had to learn to brew up his own developing solutions once he'd come to school, since fresh was always better than the pre-bottled kind, and he wanted to learn about other developing potions besides the basic one he knew, or maybe even experiment with developing new development potions, someday. He could say with honesty that he had skills and aptitudes in potions class, which he filled in along the margins of the benchmarks for that class. His Defense work, to his mixed guilt and pride, was quite good, and he knew the more striking members of the Herbology curriculum because they could make interesting subjects for photography. He thought his Transfiguration work was solid, but it was true he never got into elaborate curliques or the like in his decoration; he supposed he could, but it just never felt quite natural to him.

He looked up from his list, biting his lip and thinking while he carefully held his quill tip away from the paper to keep it from dripping. Accidentally meeting a classmate's eye, he smiled apologetically. "Sorry," he said. "I was just thinking...it's hard to say what you're adept at sometimes, isn't it?"

16 Nathaniel Mordue, Teppenpaw Self-doubt is a skill I may possess in some quantity. 1412 Nathaniel Mordue, Teppenpaw 0 5

Peyton O'Malley, Crotalus

April 30, 2019 3:12 PM

Me too by Peyton O'Malley, Crotalus

Peyton wasn't sure about this skill exploration thing. She had grown up hearing about a sister-one thankfully out of her life-who thought she was better than everyone at everything, who called herself perfection personified. One that Uncle Seth had called something else entirely.

Anyway, Carrie had been unbearably arrogant which in turn made Ryan feel worse about himself. Peyton very much did not want to be like her half-sister. Arrogance was one of the worst qualities a person could posess. Not only was it obnoxious, but it could make others feel inferior. She didn't want to do that. Peyton had seen the affect on her brother.

And knew what it felt like herself. Ever since Eden came along, it was just like she was better than Peyton in the eyes of all her siblings but Ryan. Thank Merlin she had him!

Not that she thought Eden meant to make her feel bad. Actually, Peyton doubted the fifth year thought of her at all.

Plus, well, she wasn't sure of how good she was at anything. She was told-one had to be told, or how would one know-that she was excellent at cooking and baking, which had in turn translated to being good at Potions. Her family and Connor always said her food was amazing. In fact the older Crotalus raved about Peyton's brownies and cookies and other baked goods as well as her clarinet playing. The fourth year felt he was probably just being nice as far as the latter went and wanted people to be in the orchestra.

Then again, he didn't compliment Ivy's piccolo playing quite as much. And Ivy's piccolo playing was better than Peyton's clarinet playing.

And then there were her other classes. She was decent at spell work and could grasp theory but she didn't know if she would call herself adept . Better than average maybe. And even if Peyton was adept at anything, modesty prevented her from marking herself so.

She gazed around, wishing she could have Ivy or Vlad or Jasmine or Connor to tell her what she was good at when she made eye contact with Nathaniel Mordue. "It's all right, I was rather thinking the same thing" Peyton confessed.

11 Peyton O'Malley, Crotalus Me too 1403 Peyton O'Malley, Crotalus 0 5

Dorian Montoir, Teppenpaw

May 01, 2019 4:00 AM

Do sore thumbs really stick out? by Dorian Montoir, Teppenpaw

Dorian took a seat in the guidance session. He was glad that Sonora had employed a full time professional whose job was to ensure they were capable of dealing with the future because he honestly felt like he needed one. He had only ever had one solid ambition for his life, which was to find his soulmate, get married and live happily ever after. In some ways, he was a little ahead of the curve on that, having met him when he was eleven and, slightly more importantly to this whole plan, actually having realised that a mere two years later. The rest, however, was somewhat emperilled, and he was not sure how likely it was to happen. He did not expect Mr. Row to be able to help him with moving those particular plans forward, but wanting to marry Jehan brought with it a further raft of challenges even if Jehan wanted to be with him that way. He had known that the adult world would involve procuring a job of some kind, and that had always been fine, as a vague idea. Having a job, or some form of suitable occupation, and earning money had been two distinct and totally separate things. He could study something utterly impractical, like philosophy. He could run a charming but unprofitable art gallery. He could develop an interest in an incredibly niche field of wandlore and live in an office in a museum somewhere. Or perhaps, a past modal was the correct construction to use there... He could have done those things. But the one thing he knew he wasn't going to do was to keep treading the path his parents wanted for him, and that meant he couldn't rely on their financial support. He had never had to think about money, or how it worked, or how much of it one needed to survive. And now he was faced with needing to do something with his life that paid well enough for him and Jehan to not end up homeless, and he had no idea what types of job met those parameters, or which of them he would be qualified to do. Whilst he was glad of Mr. Row's presence, it had also been a catalyst to him realising all of this, and whilst he supposed it was better to think about it, he did tend to join the guidance sessions in a state that was perpetually close to tailspinning off into anxiety as he was constantly forced to confront some of the more challenging issues life had to offer.

He took one of the quizzes as they were passed around, wondering what it would tell him about himself, and hoping the answer wasn't that he was doomed. Not that the quiz was going to say that exactly, or anything else much... In fact, he suspected it was not going to answer his questions at all. Much as he trusted Mr. Row's credentials and methods, he was realistic enough to know that circling numbers one to five on a piece of paper was not going to lead to some oracular revelation of what he should do with his life. As Mr. Row had said, it was a jumping off point for a discussion...

Of course, even if the quiz had had such powers, there was also the matter of finishing it. Dorian did not want to score himself too highly because that seemed immodest, and he didn't believe it to be true for very many things. However, he was also aware that he wasn't stupid, and he didn't want to make other people think that he was, given that they were expected to discuss this. His grammar was rarely inaccurate these days, but he remembered struggling to articulate his thoughts during his first years, and the concern that other people were going to assume him to be unintelligent had bothered him a great deal. A further issue was how often his initial response to the questions was 'It's more complicated than that.' A good example of this was communication skills - admittedly, that whole section was broken down into several more discrete questions but the whole subject was just complicated. Obviously, he was inferior to most people in this room in his spoken and written English. And this was an English test for English speaking school, so perhaps that was all that counted. However, people were continuously impressed by the range of languages he spoke and, even though he felt wrong receiving acclaim for something that was mostly just luck, he could see that his multiple languages were a useful lifeskill - possibly, in fact, one of his best assets. He was very grateful for the little spaces under each question in which he could write examples or justifications, and indeed he started with these, rather than the self-rating.

'Naturally, as a non-native speaker, my English language skills may be lacking compared to my peers...' he began. He was only halfway through noting his levels in other languages when he found he was running out of room, and his notes on how this could be useful in fields such as translation and tourism spilled out of the box and up the edge of his page. He tried several more but the same thing kept happening, even though he was using his smallest possible writing. He also was no closer to reaching a conclusion on what that all meant in terms of a linear scale, as the whole thing seemed much more three dimensional than that. Well, Mr. Row had said they should discuss it...

"I have no idea what rating to give myself on anything," he admitted to his neighbour, "Unless there is a question about being concise, or decisive, and then I think I must score at the bottom of the scale," he admitted, nodding to the notes he had made. "I do not think I am excellent at all these - they are not all examples," he added hastily, suddenly unsure whether the instructions had been to explore their thoughts on paper or to merely do so out loud and list ways of proving their skills on the asssignment itself. "I just... have too many thoughts," he added, feeling the need to justify his ramblings, and his nerves inclining him to talk a little more than normal, "Except, is there such a thing as too many thoughts? I-" he cut himself off, although it was clear that a silent debate was still raging in his head. Having thoughts was generally a positive trait, and thinking things through was the best way to avoid danger and other negativve consequences. But thoughts could keep you up at night, and then they weren't so welcome, and they could stop you making a decision when you really needed to make one. They could also, more practically speaking, simply not fit in tge space you had been given. "I have too many thoughts," he concluded.

13 Dorian Montoir, Teppenpaw Do sore thumbs really stick out? 1401 Dorian Montoir, Teppenpaw 0 5

Heinrich

May 12, 2019 8:36 PM

If they are swollen or splinted by Heinrich

Heinrich thought he might like to take an independent study next year. He had thought he might take one this year, but hadn't decided in time what exactly it would be that he should study, so he'd opted to go for the potions assistant position instead. He felt he had a solid grasp on his responsibilities there now, so he was again considering his options for study next year. He had not yet narrowed them down to anything approaching a short list, and he was hopeful that Mr. Row's aptitude assessment might give him some ideas on where to focus.

The instructions were simple enough, just rate each listed skill on a scale of 1 to 5 and make notes about your aptitude. He took a page and began filling it out. There were some words he could guess from context but looked up in his German-English dictionary anyway just in case it didn't mean what he thought it meant, but overall, he was feeling pretty satisfied by the defined skill set that was emerging. He had very few ones. There were significantly more twos, and most of those involved comments about his improving but less than stellar English composition skills. If he was working in a German environment, he'd rank himself higher.

He had about the same number of threes, fewer fours, but a respectable number. His fives were in potion brewing, perseverance, research, and a few other items that were largely solitary and/or language independent.

He was already done with his rankings, and partway through adding in the comments to justify his answers when his neighbor spoke up. Heinrich knew Dorian's name and House, and his status as another non-native speaker, but he wouldn't say he knew much more than that about the older Teppenpaw. Heinrich, in fact, knew very little about any of the other students at the school, which he should probably note down as a weakness somewhere, but he wasn't quite sure where that fit in.

Dorian . . . was not concise. He said as much and Heinrich was very willing to believe this about him as a rule and character trait after hearing him talk. He mentally added this description to the two other facts he knew about Dorian Montoir.

"Many thoughts are a good thing," he stated with certainty, as he was an Aladren in good standing and no other opinion could therefore be entertained. He looked down at his neighbor's paper and felt obligated to add, "But concise is good in small space." Heinrich suspected his trouble with English was causing him to be more concise than he would be if he didn't need to simplify his sentences into simple ideas he had the grammar to convey more-or-less clearly. His own notes on the skill assessment were generally simple fragments that expressed his main point in as few English words as possible.

Partly that was because it required less mental translation and was more efficient, but mostly because that meant he wouldn't be as harshly judged on his grammar if it was clear he wasn't trying to express complete sentences.

To be helpful toward the originally stated problem though, Heinrich continued, "I say one when I have never to try the skill. Two is when I need help with the skill, or I doing the skill very bad. Three is when I struggle but I can do the skill. Four is when I know what I doing. Rank five is when I am very good with the skill. So my English grammar skill is rank two because verb conjugation, word order, and prepositions are hard and I am wrong a lot. My English vocabulary skill is rank four because I know the words for prepositions, conjugation, and struggle. This helps?"

1 Heinrich If they are swollen or splinted 1414 Heinrich 0 5

Dorian

May 13, 2019 9:02 PM

Okay, so on a scale of one to five..? by Dorian

Dorian gave Heinrich a warm smile when he assured him many thoughts were a good thing. This was a benefit of interacting with Aladrens (his eyes slid briefly across to his favourite, whom he was sure would have said much the same thing) as they were inclined not to mind his obssessive need to examine things from every angle. Though admittedly Heinrich did agree that he might need to narrow those thoughts down a little.

He noted down Heinrich's ranking system on a spare piece of parchment.

"Somewhat," he nodded appreciatively. He was not sure he had ever heard Heinrich put so many ideas forth. Admittedly, he had never been one to one with him before, and Dorian well remembered what it was like not wanting to speak up in front of a whole class. Still, he appreciated Heinrich talking with him, especially as he also used something quite personal as an example - admittedly, something the two of them had in common, and thus something Dorian was unlikely to give a negative reaction to, but he still remembered how vulnerable it had made him feel to admit that he did not understand something or know the words for what he wanted to say. "It helps to have a more... clear definition. So then maybe I can be more fixed in how I apply it," he reasoned, wanting to show he really did mean it, and that he was taking Heinrich's advice on board, "And prepositions are evil," he agreed out of sympathy. They were tricky, they seemed to vary so much between languages that there was suddenly less rhyme and reason and certainty to how objects related than you had previously assumed. Personally he had found most of English grammar hard but more from a pronunciation point than anything else, relying as it did on subtle single sounds on word endings - neither of his home languages being particularly big on having those. But that was a lot harder to explain concisely and he was already rambling at Heinrich more than enough. Case in point, he wasn't done with his confusion over the survey...

"Sometimes though, I come back to the question and thinking 'What does it mean, more precisely?'" he tagged the additional words on to make it clear it was not his English comprehension that was lacking. "For example, 'How would you rate your skills in communicating with a group?' Explain 'communicating' - I do not speak without errors, but usually I can make my point across. That is communicating, no? So am I better or worse than a native speaker who has not much to say? Or it averages to the same but for different reasons? And which group? Some people make it uncomfortable to speak with them." He consulted Heinrich's list but it did not immediately answer this question, "I suppose, make number three 'struggle or can do sometimes,' and then your list does answer my problem. Some people can just....be the same with everyone. Apparently," his eyes flicked again to Jehan.

"Sorry. I am talking lots," he apologised, aware that Heinrich might find it ironic that Dorian was envying others their ability to talk to anyone whilst rambling on to a virtual stranger. He wasn't sure why he was being like this. He supposed it had happened, to a degree, with Parker last year, in that Dorian had been bogged down in the details of the task and prone to rambling even before they took the confusing and confunding potions. He concluded that he had two types of nervousness (great, just great, as if one was not enough) - the first kind was fear of the person he with whom he was interacting, and how they would react to his thoughts, and whether they would hurt him. That sort made him shut down. Then there was the type where the task itself made him worried, or pulled his brain in different directions, and his brain got too full and he had to let some of them out, and seek assurance that he was on the right track because he did not want to make mistakes and wanted to do everything very thoroughly. Sometimes those two interacted. Like they had with Parker. He had had a lot of thoughts about the task but had had to carefully modify them to make sure he didn't activate some scary underlying Beater jock tendency that would have Parker beating him up. Except, now he was starting to conclude that that mode didn't exist, and that Parker, in spite of all the initial evidence to the contrary, might actually be safe.

Apparently, Heinrich was either less intimidating than Parker, Dorian was getting braver(? - or at least more able to display his neuroses to others, which he wasn't sure was really progress) or this task was just doing a number on his brain, even though it should have been simple, and even though no one else probably thought it was a big deal. Poor Heinrich, getting stuck with him. Even though they had been told it was a discussion task, he was worried that he was bothering Heinrich - there might not be any such thing as too many thoughts but there was such a thing as letting too many of them escape your mouth, and he was almost certainly talking about the wrong things by microanalysing the assignment instead of completing it and discussing the results. But the results would only be meaningful to discuss if he completed it in a structured and logical way. He thought about pointing out this defence to the Aladren, but he really had done enough talking and an Aladren was probably capable of concluding that without his help.

13 Dorian Okay, so on a scale of one to five..? 1401 Dorian 0 5

Nathaniel

May 15, 2019 8:42 PM

Well, I can see why we both have cause. by Nathaniel

Peyton O'Malley was a person Nathaniel regarded with a certain degree of wariness, but also with a certain degree of fascination. She herself had never done anything to draw either (except the slight wariness one had to have when dealing with any young lady; one could not act inappropriately toward a young lady, that was bad behavior, that was disgraceful), but her family....

Two divorces. Two. Both of her parents had either failed or been failed by others, and then, instead of decently pretending to be widowed, had married each other. Of course, second marriages weren't unheard of, especially when heirs were needed - but her mother had already had sons, and while he had no way of knowing whether Mrs. O'Malley or her first husband had been the failure in their marriage...what did it matter? Why would a woman who had sons marry again? If she was destitute after the divorce, then there was no reason for anyone to marry her, and if she had a fortune in her own right, then by rights it belonged to her sons from her first marriage. Marrying again allowed a stepfather, if he was so inclined, to encroach upon it, which was not very nice for her sons.

Either way, though, he still couldn't help feeling a slight affinity for the girl. None of this was anything that could be mentioned, any more than the...irregularities...in his own immediate family could be mentioned, but they still had this in common, families that weren't proper enough.

"I'm sure we can both think of something," he said pleasantly. "I'm not sure if anyone else would say I'm adept, but I like taking photographs, and I'm good at Potions." Bluntly declaring these things felt odd, but not bad. "What about you?"

16 Nathaniel Well, I can see why we both have cause. 1412 Nathaniel 0 5

Ivy Brockert,Teppenpaw

May 18, 2019 1:37 AM

Exploring by Ivy Brockert,Teppenpaw

Ivy entered the library for another of Mr. Row's session. Normally, she enjoyed the time to work on different projects but when he mentioned what they were going to do today, her heart sank. In all honesty, the Teppenpaw's confidence had been severely shaken. She could have shaken off how Evelyn behaved towards her given how everyone else seemed to have, for lack of a better phrase, taken her side at the Aronos meeting,but failing to get prefect, to get her professors' approval made her doubt herself.

She felt guilty for feeling bad, like she was being a sore loser, even though she wasn't running Eden down or blaming anyone but herself. However blaming herself did not feel very good. Especially since Ivy was not sure what she could have done differently. She had been involved but not so involved that anyone be worried for her health if she took on more. She'd done well in classes without acting like a know-it-all and been friendly to everyone. Was it because Ivy wasn't social enough? That didn't make sense either because Cleo had been the one to get most bashful and she was prefect.

And if she didn't know what she'd done wrong, how could she fix it so she had a chance at Head Girl? True, that was voted on by the students, but the staff picked who got on the ballots and apparently, they didn't like her.

Ivy listened carefully to Mr. Row. It was interesting how he mentioned they couldn't be good at everything. Certainly, Aunt Jillian had felt very differently, at least of her own daughters, that they were supposed to be superhuman. The fifth year, seeing how well things had gone with her aunt's beliefs, tended to assume the guidance counselor was correct.

However, maybe, Ivy wasn't good at enough things. Maybe if she was good at more than she was, she'd have gotten prefect.

And what, exactly, was meant by demonstratable skill? It sounded self explanatory but the addition of the word demonstratable implied that there skills that one couldn't demonstrate.

Ugh, maybe Ivy was a know it all after all. No wonder they didn't like her.

As she went down the survey, she found herself feeling uncomfortable with putting down that she was adept at things. The Teppenpaw had thought she was good at some things but maybe she'd been wrong? Maybe she'd thought she was better than she actually was? Merlin, she hoped not! That was not a good way to be.

And then there were things that Ivy wasn't sure how good she was at them? How could she mark things accurately in those cases?

She turned to the person next to her. "Do you want to work together?" She asked

11 Ivy Brockert,Teppenpaw Exploring 394 Ivy Brockert,Teppenpaw 0 5

Caitlin Pierce, Crotalus

May 19, 2019 7:46 PM

I have better things to do by Caitlin Pierce, Crotalus

Initially,Caitlin hadn't really paid much attention to the arrival of the guidance counselor. After all, she wasn't going to need career counseling. Father had been none too pleased about the Anns' new business venture because clearly, going and having careers was not the proper thing for young women to be doing. The Anns themselves were unlikely to get married because they were too odd and codependent on each other but other women had a chance and they shouldn't be encouraging them to do otherwise.

And Mr. Row wouldn't be helping students with personal problems. Not that Caitlin would ever go to him with any even if he was. If anything was wrong, she would keep it to herself as a matter of pride. Plus, the Crotalus couldn't have issues in the first place. If she did, she would reflect badly on her father and Thaddeus would win.

That, in fact, was why she had eventually had decided to ask Mr. Row for help with assignments. Or rather, Caitlin did them on her own, but often asked him to look over them. She wanted the best possible grades she could get.

Today, she was hoping to work on a transfiguration essay. However, Mr. Row had other ideas. Caitlin suppressed a look of annoyance at the worksheet. What did she need to do a skill assessment for? She wasn't going to have a career so it wasn't as if she needed to see where her talents lied so she could pick one based on them and surely she didn't need a worksheet to tell her what she was good at. Doing this exercise was going to take time away from things Caitlin actually needed to get done.

She sighed and began to fill it out, noticing with pleasure that how good she was at something seemed to be correlating with how important it was for a young lady to know.

Once the Crotalus finished, she looked around for someone appropriate to work with. Spotting such a person, she asked "Do you want to work together?"

11 Caitlin Pierce, Crotalus I have better things to do 1415 Caitlin Pierce, Crotalus 0 5

Peyton

May 22, 2019 12:53 AM

Don't you wish that wasn't the case by Peyton

Peyton nodded. "I really like Potions too. My favorite hobby is cooking and baking so Potions is similar." She paused. "Oh, and I play the clarinet." She knew that was not necessarily a skill which would be at all marketable for her. One had to be very amazing to play an instrument professionally.

Then again, what did it matter? Just because Sally had chosen to have a career, it didn't mean Peyton had to. In fact, it might be in her best interest not to. While neither she nor anyone with manners brought it up, her family had had it's scandals. Her parents had been married to other people before each other. People who had not been dead at the time, even though her mom's first husband was dead now. So maybe Peyton should not to anything to tarnish the family image further.

Not that she minded that much. The Crotalus quite liked the idea of staying home and taking an active role in her children's lives when she got older. However, she wasn't going to depend on house elves for cooking.

Peyton just hoped that didn't make her sister-or anyone else in her family-disappointed in her. Especially if Eden had a career. If that was the case and the fourth year was a stay-at-home mom and socialite, would Sally like the Teppenpaw more than she did Peyton? The Crotalus worried a lot about that as it was.

At least Ryan wouldn't think less of her, he never would. She'd always have him, no matter what.

"I don't know if I'm adept though. I mean, people usually tell me they like things I bake or cook." She told Nathaniel.

11 Peyton Don't you wish that wasn't the case 1403 Peyton 0 5