Professor X
December 23, 2016 4:32 PM
[Greenhouse Two] Advanced Class: It's a jungle in here by Professor X
Nathan stood in front of the "Advanced" Herbology class in the smaller greenhouse he had begun referring to as Greenhouse Two. Over midterm it had filled out with the large vibrant plants of the Amazon Rainforest. This was mostly for the benefit of his fair group studying Brazil, but the Advanced students would also get to learn about the wide variety of vegetation that made up one of the world's greatest jungles.There had been no homework or exam to return today, as he'd returned their midterm exam last week and he wasn't done grading their latest essay yet, so he did not meet them at the door today but instead greeted them as a group, "Hello, good morning. I hope you all had an enjoyable weekend." It was technically a Tuesday, but he only taught two days a week so this was the first he was seeing many of them since last Thursday. "We are going to be continuing our tropical plants unit today."
"For those of you planning to take the CATS," it was entirely optional this year, and not recommended for the seventh years at all as they would have had only one year of the subject, and he didn't expect the sixth years to be ready for it until next year, but some overachiever seventh year might try signing up for it to fill a prerequisite for their college course of study, or a sixth year who hated themself might decide to try for it this year so they could qualify to try for the RATS next year, which was also strongly not recommended, but neither was it restricted. "You are going to need to be able to identify which level or levels of the rainforest a plant belongs to. The layers are: emergent; that's the top level poking out above most of the tree tops, the canopy; that is the dense layer of tree tops, the understory; above the ground but below most of the tree tops, and the forest floor."
He gestured to the work table the sat around. "In front of each of you are four tags with the name of each of those layers on it. Put your names on each tag. As your pre-quiz this morning, I want you to use your best judgement to tag a plant from each of the four layers with the appropriate tag in front of you. So if you see a ground bush, for example, tie your tag 'forest floor' to it. Obviously, the greenhouse isn't tall enough to host full grown emergent and canopy trees, but we have some younger specimens of both here, so just do your best guessing which is which without height being as determining a factor as it should be. Any questions? Given the nature of this quiz, and that we haven't actually gone over this material yet, you are free to collaborate with one another, but no books out until everyone has tagged four plants. There are ladders against the walls if you need them to reach some of the plants growing on other plants. Okay, get to it. You have fifteen minutes, then we are going to go over the traits you should have been looking for."
OOC: This is new material so unless your character actually knows something about rainforests or read ahead, this should mostly be educated guesswork and logic rather than looking for specific species. If you know specific species, more power to you, but I'll accept people tagging 'tall trees' or 'thick vines' as perfectly valid actions. Have fun, jungle explorers!
Subthreads: It's not beneath my dignity to climb a tree by Lena Westley with Olivier Westley
More like a waste of time by Oliver Ferguson II, Aladren
♪ Disorder and confusion everywhere ♫ (Chaslyn) by Tobias Reinhardt, Teppenpaw with Chaslyn Brockert,Crotalus
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Professor X
[Greenhouse Two] Advanced Class: It's a jungle in here
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Professor X
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Lena Westley
December 29, 2016 6:20 AM
It's not beneath my dignity to climb a tree by Lena Westley
Though Lena was intimately familiar with Welsh flora and fairly confident in her studies of the plants that made up Labyrinth Gardens, signing up for Advanced Herbology had taken a leap of faith. Though confident in her abilities to learn the material she was a bit apprehensive in the practical applications that the course would surely require. Thankfully today’s lesson was about being able to tell which plants belonged to various layers in a forest, something she was already familiar with. Though the types of plants in the greenhouse differed greatly from what she had seen in person they had been in her textbook. Having spotted some variety of the genus Sagittaria –distinct in their arrowheaded shape and aquatic nature- she mentally ticked off ‘emergent’.As Professor Xavier continued to explain how the assignment worked, Lena dug her pen from her bag and continued over to the work bench to dutifully write her name on one of each of the four tags. Both Clark and John were in this class, and so far she hadn’t interrupted their class time together. Unfortunately neither Olivier nor Aiden were in this class though, which meant wandering through the green house alone or becoming a third wheel to the boys. Before she could contemplate which would be better someone had tapped her on the shoulder and broken her out of her reverie.
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Lena Westley
It's not beneath my dignity to climb a tree
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Lena Westley
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Olivier Westley
January 07, 2017 6:36 PM
Sometimes I wonder how we're related... by Olivier Westley
Herbology was one of those classes that Olivier thought was important to take which was why when it did not appear on the list of proposed classes for the first few years of Sonora, he was rather appalled. What if someone tried to poison him? What if he needed to poison someone else? All of these things could be solved with a simple Herbology class. So, he had taken it upon himself, over the past few years as he got a handle on the rest of his classes, to teach himself Herbology out of various library books. He didn’t do many out of class activities (none at all besides playing piano by himself, really) and he didn’t have any friends so he had a lot of spare time. When Herbology was finally allowed as a class, he declined to take it. He had been educating himself all these years, why did he need to add it on only now?But then, as the first term of his seventh and last year at the dreaded institution went by he realised something dreadful. Without having it on a transcript, there was no way he would be able to conceivably allow any future employer to think his RATS scores counted without him having meddled with something. Besides, no one was supposed to know how clever he really was, no one was supposed to realise anything. He was supposed to be the idiotically friendly yet simpleton brother so that Lena could shine. He knew, logically, that Lena preferred to be in the backdrop which was fine but yet…yet… Olivier wanted people to recognise his twin for how great she was. She deserved recognition, she deserved acknowledgement. She deserved to be happy, but sometimes he wasn’t sure she knew what was good for her—why else would she be dating Clark Dill?
He grumbled to himself as he entered the greenhouse. Nothing this year was going right. He hadn’t wanted to add yet another class onto his schedule, he hadn’t wanted to have to sit amongst his idiotic classmates and listen to them bumble their way through plant species he had taught himself years ago, to smile his way through another day again. It was exhausting and he always felt relief when he could come home to the empty seventh year dorm and relax, alone. If he had stayed the social child he’d once been, Olivier might have lamented being the only male Crotalus in his year, but now he longed for the time by himself to recharge and forget about all the idiotic things his gossiping classmates had done during the day.
That particular day, however, was probably going to be better than some of the others because it appeared that Lena had yet to find herself a partner for the assignment which meant he could work with her and not some simpleton. When they’d first come to Sonora, the twins had promised to be there for each other, but being in separate houses in combination with each of their rather introverted habits had caused a rift to grow until they were no longer as close as they once had been. Olivier missed the days where it had been just him and his sister in their own little world without anyone else to bother them. He was vaguely aware that this habit was weird now that they were older, but he didn’t see anything wrong with it—they were siblings, after all, siblings were supposed to care for each other.
Olivier reached out and gently tapped her on the shoulder. She was day-dreaming, he was sure of it. “Aechmea chantinii,” he said, nodding to the stripped plant in front of her, moving a raised index finger in front of his lips to indicate that he wanted his plant genius to stay under wraps. He moved to write out a label in his scrawl to put on the plant and handed it to Lena to allow her to do the honours.
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Olivier Westley
Sometimes I wonder how we're related...
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Olivier Westley
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Oliver Ferguson II, Aladren
January 09, 2017 1:37 PM
More like a waste of time by Oliver Ferguson II, Aladren
Though he had no social life to speak of at school, what with most people around not being worth his time and a roommate who totally annoyed him, Oliver was glad to be back at Sonora. Midterm was full of parties full of irritating small talk. Plus his house had been invaded. Priscilla's company was something he was going to have to bear and get used to but that didn't mean he was thrilled to have her, her parents and her two sisters there, in his house for the duration of his break. At least Mother seemed to be happy to have Mrs. Caldwell's company. She seemed to be fairly lonely all the time and Oliver blamed his father naturally. And Mr. Caldwell seemed a perfectly acceptable male role model, so different from what he'd grown up with while Priscilla herself was about as good as a woman could be. Perfectly proper, reasonably intelligent-for a woman-and pretty.On the other hand though, her sisters totally got on his nerves. Emma, Priscilla's fraternal twin, seemed to be awfully fragile mentally which Oliver admitted could have it's advantages but could also be quite embarrassing-Priscilla seemed mortified by her- and dealing with her tried his patience. Oliver hoped it was the result of something her parents had done like his grandfather had done to Grandmother Rosemary and not some genetic malfunction that could be passed on to his kids. And twelve year old Mimi was even worse! She was so blasted nosy! He'd spent the majority of the time terrified that Mimi would discover that thing in the library that he'd discovered a few years ago. The discovery that had both ruined his life and given him new purpose.
He'd rather be here, getting an education. Oliver was a true Aladren with a genuine love of learning and to achieve his goals in life-mainly fixing his father's perversions and not letting Nora best him-there was a lot he needed to know. So that's where he focused his energies. After all, he was betrothed now and barely anyone in his class was even a needed contact.
However despite this, sometimes, Oliver wondered why he had bothered signing up for Herbology. Well, okay, he knew exactly why he'd signed up. It was because plants produced different effects-one couldn't be Frank Brockert's great-grandson without learning that -and it was good for him to know them. They might prove useful in regards to his father. However, he didn't see the point of labeling different parts of the rain forest. For one thing, it seemed way too easy, something even his cousin Bridget could do. Hell, even Uncle Marshall could figure out some of these things and he was constantly drunk. He knew they lacked prerequisites for this class, but that didn't mean they couldn't learn something useful.
Oliver sighed to himself as he received his cards. Well, forest floor was super obvious so he stuck that card on the ground. He figured out the rest in short order and placed them appropriately. Then he stood back, his arms crossed and waited for the next directions.
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Oliver Ferguson II, Aladren
More like a waste of time
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Oliver Ferguson II, Aladren
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Tobias Reinhardt, Teppenpaw
January 10, 2017 3:05 AM
♪ Disorder and confusion everywhere ♫ (Chaslyn) by Tobias Reinhardt, Teppenpaw
Tobi had always liked his head of house Mr. Xavier and when he decided to take his certification and become a full time Herbology professor, Tobi knew that he would be taking the class. Even if plants weren’t something that greatly intrigued him, stopping just short of animals on Tobi’s list of favorite things, he would have taken the class because Mr. Xavier was just such a nice head of house and Tobi wanted to support him in his endeavours just as he supported all his students.The Amazon rainforest that he stepped into when classes started again after midterm made Tobi feel instantly at ease. He loosened his robes to let him breath a little in the thick humidity necessary for Amazonian plants to survive and knew that in a short while he would be likely be shedding it and rolling up his sleeves. He flung his braid over his shoulder, knowing full well that equally as soon his neck would be sticky but that in humidity his hair bothered him least when it wasn’t swinging forward and across the side of his neck but rather brushing his t-shirt and prickling his back.
He listened dutifully to the instructions and turned to find Chaslyn. He was concerned about his friend since she had signed up to take Herbology when it had been offered along with a full load of RATs level classes and he wanted to check in with her. When he did find her, Tobi was glad that he had erased her name from the Chile group because as much as he would have liked to work with her and as guilty as he felt about it, he could tell that she needed the break. At least Herbology wasn’t too heavy of a load since none of them had really taken many courses of it before and so Professor Xavier seemed to be teaching them really basic, low beginner things.
“Hey,” he said with a smile. “Want to work together?”
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Tobias Reinhardt, Teppenpaw
♪ Disorder and confusion everywhere ♫ (Chaslyn)
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Tobias Reinhardt, Teppenpaw
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Chaslyn Brockert,Crotalus
January 31, 2017 5:03 PM
Confusion is right by Chaslyn Brockert,Crotalus
As usual, Chaslyn was going on about four hours of sleep in the last few days, despite all her little secret ways of getting things done. All that meant was she had no excuse for not doing so. As of right now, she had gone through about four cups of coffee-three had just not been enough, she was developing a tolerance-each of which she'd drank at record breaking speeds. In fact, she used her special little helper in order so as not to waste too much time taking all her other special little helpers.It was more important this year than ever. Not only did Chaslyn have RATS coming up, but she was planning to take her CATS for Herbology too, despite them being optional. Mother was insisting upon it naturally. Plus, she was in nearly every club except two even though Professor Pye pretty much never allowed her to duel in dueling club. Savannah had pointed out the benefits of this, as Chaslyn was signed up and would appear in the yearbook so Mother wouldn't know any different and she had time for other things then but to the Crotalus it felt dishonest and any dishonesty Mother would sniff out of her. Chaslyn was an awful liar and she especially never could lie to her mother.
Then there was the fair. She was getting quite worried about it because she hadn't heard anything about a meeting for her group. The seventh year was sure that teams were meeting by now, not that she knew for sure being that as far as she knew none of her cousins had signed up. At least they hadn't been when she had and she hadn't heard anything different. Still, the fair was getting closer and Chaslyn couldn't imagine Deputy Headmistress Skies being disorganized enough to let it slip.
She tried to pay attention to what Professor Xavier was saying, something about continuing their tropical plants unit and identifying rain forest layers. She wondered if it would be on her CATS, as it did seem rather basic. And if you couldn't get the basics, certainly you couldn't pass CATS.
As they were sent out to work, she was approached by Tobi Reinhardt. "Sure." Chaslyn replied, managing a weak smile. She was so tired.
Then she remembered. Tobi had signed up for the same group she had. "Have you heard anything about a fair group meeting for Chile?" She asked. "Because I haven't."
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Chaslyn Brockert,Crotalus
Confusion is right
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Chaslyn Brockert,Crotalus
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