Sully Quincy, Pecari
March 08, 2013 10:25 AM
Office Hours by Sully Quincy, Pecari
Sully knocked tentatively at Professor Skies' open doorframe. He was expected, more or less, and it was a couple minutes past when her office hours began so any student ought to be welcome, but it was outside Sully's normal Interact-With-Teachers time so he felt he needed to make his presence known and be invited inside.Once he was seated within, he began explaining his difficulties from the beginning, since there wasn't anyone else there to overhear and judge, and she had indictated during class she would try to help him find when things started going wrong - which was easy, since things had never really gone right - and try to bring him back on track. He figured he was probably too far behind at this point to catch up with the other fifth years by the end of the year, but a third or fourth year level might at least get him an A on the CATS and that would be a serious accomplishment.
"I started on day one with three handicaps," he told her matter-of-factually. "First, I'm a pessimist, so I'm preinclinded to think anything I do is going to fail even under favorable conditions." Which was no doubt why he was no better than mediocre even in the subjects he'd had relative success performing.
"Second and third are kind of intertwined. I'm a muggleborn and I'm a skeptic. I spent the first couple of months at Sonora kind of expecting somebody to tell me this was all some kind of trick. Transfiguration is just something my brain and my upbringing can't really grasp as possible. I mean, Charms runs around the laws of physics on a scooter, honking an obnoxious horn at them and calling them names, but Transfiguation just walks right through them and doesn't even acknowledge they exist."
"So at first, I couldn't do anything because I was still waiting for someone to show me the trick prop - my mom is in show business - then after I did get that magic was real, I just could not get my head wrapped around Transfiguration especially, and then it kind of snowballed as each failure reinforced the idea that the whole subject was impossible for me, if not for everyone else."
He took a breath, as his words had started coming faster as he got more agitated, and he'd run out of air for a moment. It calmed him a little and he added an explanation of his only bright spot. "Just before second year, my now-stepdad, who's a wizard, gave me a little pep talk about magic and stuff, so I went into that first Transfiguration class actually thinking being a second year would make a difference. And it did, until we got a couple harder lessons and it all fell apart again."
After that, he stopped believing in pep talks, and even though Simon continued to give them every year before he got on the wagon, Sully had never repeated that brief grade bump he'd gotten at the start of second year. "I do best at assignments where there is a visible similarity between the start and end point, and if the two are made of similar stuff, because then I can pretend in my head that I'm just sculpting with magic, but when I have to turn a leafy plant into a stick bug, I just don't even know how to start, and making it animate, too, is just, I don't know, crazy hard."
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Sully Quincy, Pecari
Office Hours
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Sully Quincy, Pecari
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Professor Skies
March 11, 2013 3:37 PM
Making a start by Professor Skies
“Come in,” Professor Skies, glancing up at the open door and not being at all surprised at who was there, although she was pleased that he had seen their arrangement through. “Sullivan,” she smiled, “Glad to see you – have a seat,” she invited.She had been going to ask him to talk her through where he'd got up to but he seemed to be on the same page without her asking. She listened carefully, giving the occasional encouraging nod or remark such as 'I see.' She couldn't help but chuckle at his description of what magic did to physics.
“Well... The one thing I've never discovered magic capable of is performing personality changes. Not permanently, anyway, and let's not even get into the ethics of casting cheering charms on you for a whole year... That said, I've known plenty of the grumpiest, most pessimistic old codgers in my time who were still perfectly capable of magic. I don't think there are any personality types who flat out cannot do magic – your personality isn't blocking you. It just maybe gives you different strengths and weaknesses to someone else, and seems to be something you're letting get on top of you... I'm not a shrink, so I'm not going to get into that too deeply. Hopefully, if we just show your eyes the proof of what you can do, it will help you get past this mental block...
“I'm afraid I also have to disagree with two of the statements you made.... Transfiguration doesn't... what was it, run straight through physics without so much as a 'hello'? If you want to, at advanced level and beyond, you can actually get into the Quantum Mechanics of Transfiguration. How Transfiguration interacts with physics is definitely a bit of a mind-mender but it's something a considerable amount of academic energy has been devoted to. I can try to find some summaries of it, if it interests you and if seemingly breaking physics is something that really bothers you. However, I appreciate you may just have been using it as a way of expressing how it seems to go against what you've always believed to be true and may not actually be asking to read more theory.... It must be quite a culture shock...” she smiled sympathetically. Muggle borns really did have a lot to cope with, though for the most part they seemed to adjust fairly quickly.
“Your other point about making yourself believe you are sculpting one object into another... You spoke of that as if it was doing the wrong thing but I find that's a very healthy way to view Transfiguration. I did not recap Transfiguration Tables with your class, I don't think... I wasn't sure that you'd used them but, if you hadn't, I assumed you would have found your own ways to approach projects. When you are looking at an object, it is absolutely appropriate to think of as many similarities as you can, as well as differences. This is the format I use for doing that,” she pulled out one of the tables she used for her beginner classes which listed all things such as colour, form, weight, function... “This is how you should be comparing objects in your head before you begin. If you find similarities, then it allows you to concentrate on channelling your energy just towards the differences. Like you said, if you look at object and think 'I have to change everything about that...' Well, it would overwhelm most people! But you look at it and think, ok I just have to change the colour and the shape.... Then it becomes a lot easier. Admittedly, if you do those one at a time, you get partials, or a Transfiguration in several steps, but the idea is you become... better at just grouping those into one smooth change. The old adage 'practice makes perfect' applies – the more times you do it, the more it becomes just one smooth process. Like riding a broom. Or... is it a bicycle?” she asked, getting the emphasis ever so slightly wrong. “When you first learn, there's ascending and descending, accelerating, reversing, steering.... After a while, it just becomes... flying. Or... bicycling. You're not really thinking about all the different bits of doing it – you're just thinking 'I want to go over there' and doing the elements necessary to get you there.
“Now, as for things to practice.... I thought we could practice changing one feature. For example, I could give you a whole basket of lemons and get you to change the colour of one, the material of another, the shape of another. That might be a bit easy for you but hopefully it will build your confidence. Then maybe move up to two on one thing and so on. I can also give you pairs of objects and blank Transfiguration Tables, and you can practise working out the similarities and differences. As you get onto more advanced changes it can become a bit of a lateral thinking puzzle... Making links like objects being hand-held, or having a third object which they are both related to, even if they aren't related to each other.
“How does any of that sound? You have to be honest with me about whether you think things will help, or whether they're too easy, or still too hard or just... not hitting the problem square on. I won't be offended at being corrected, and I'm sure neither of us wants to waste time on the wrong thing.”
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Professor Skies
Making a start
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Professor Skies
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