Not mine on Elective Hall

Killian Row

March 01, 2020 10:16 AM

A Taste of the Future [Beginners, I-II] by Killian Row

Killian had been thinking a lot about his beginner students since the trip to Tumbleweed last term, and since the holidays with his family. Bonny and Lorcan had made an appearance - their first in over eleven years if Bonny's existence was anything to judge by - and everyone seemed perfectly fine with that. As if there was nothing at all wrong with anything happening. But there was wasn't there? Maybe it was just Killian, being too worried and too perfect and too stuffy for his family. Generally, he wouldn't think like that. He knew his parents loved him and he knew he was far from perfect. But when he was put up against his older brother, his own journey through life couldn't help looking like compensation.

He put those thoughts aside as the first students began appearing for the day's class and he smiled at them, as comfortable as he could be. He loved being with his students. He didn't love thinking about the fact that Bonny would be in this class next year, if all went to plan, and he tried to just . . . not think about that then.

Greeting each and every student by name, with a smile and a warm welcome, Killian waited for them to settle before beginning. Mara Morales was in this class. He wondered if she'd know she inspired this lesson.

"Hello, all," he said simply. "Today, we're going to be looking ahead a little bit to start getting some ideas for what you all think you'd like to do or study." He gestured with his wand at two stacks of paper and they flew out to the students, each of them receiving one paper from each. "One page has a list of the different classes that Sonora offers, and one page has a list of common careers in the magical and non-magical worlds after school. Working with your partner, I want you to come up with a list of how each class might be helpful and which jobs it would help with. You'll finish the last part of this assignment at home because I'm going to ask you to do a short reflection about which ones sounded interesting and which ones didn't sound interesting to you."

He paused, giving space to answer any questions that arose. Then, he nodded. "Go ahead and find a partner and get started. Let me know if you need any clarifications on anything."

Subthreads:

Why do we need partners for this? by Mab with Morgan Garrett

Not mine by Esme Brockert with Sadie-Lake Chalmers

22 Killian Row A Taste of the Future [Beginners, I-II] 1450 1 5

Mab

March 05, 2020 7:09 PM

Why do we need partners for this? by Mab

The side was a bit more invisible than the back. Teachers knew people went to the back when they wanted to goof off. Mab did not want to goof off. But she did not want to be noticed or called on either. This made the sides ideal. Sides took a bit more effort to look at than the middle. Interestingly, it was often the front row on the farthest side seat that was often the most overlooked. It was outside the usual cone of focus, and everyone knew people in the front row didn't cause trouble so there wasn't much need to check that the people sitting there weren't doing something wrong. Mab preferred the left side. Left was sinister. She identified with sinister. Sinister - particularly in the meaning of 'left' - hadn't done anything wrong at all and yet it kind of freaked people out.

Her chosen spot was not so invisible that she missed getting the hand-outs, so she looked those over idly as the teacher talked. Being a changeling, she was kind of interested in what the available careers were after graduation, and what the classes she was taking now had to do with any of them, but she was still just a first year and that seemed like a very long time in the future before it was going to make any difference to her at all. Even her CATS were still four years and a few months away.

Still, it would be an interesting exercise, she thought, if he hadn't said that blasted word everyone at this school seemed so keen on. Even with so many more students there, she was sure the word 'partners' came up at least three times more often here as it ever did in her Boston elementary school.

'At home,' on the other hand, was rarely uttered here, and she wondered if this guy didn't realize this was a boarding school, or if they were supposed to wait until summer to finish the assignment. Or maybe he thought living here most months of the year made their dorms 'home'. Mab didn't count that as home. She wasn't entirely sure where 'home' was right now, in all honesty, but it was probably in Massachusetts, not Arizona. Maybe just generally Boston as a whole until things settled a little more. Until Mom turned up.

Deciding on a career did sound like something she'd want to discuss with Mom, so maybe he really had meant home.

But that was still ages away, and Mom wasn't around to ask, and some eleven or twelve year old who was unlucky enough to be her partner was not who she wanted to discuss the future with.

At least matching class to career sounded less fraught with personal details. She turned to the student sitting nearest to her. "Aurors need Defense Against the Dark Arts," she stated, as Auror was the one wizarding career she knew anything about, so she wanted to get that one out there before she started to sound like the uninformed changeling she was.

1 Mab Why do we need partners for this? 1473 0 5

Morgan Garrett

March 14, 2020 6:26 PM

Two heads are better than one, said the Hydra. by Morgan Garrett

Morgan had known which career path she wanted to pursue for a long time. She was going to become an actress, become known well all around the country, and maybe marry a politician at some point, if one presented himself, but only as a parenthesis to the acting. She could be anyone, make a lot of money doing it, and, in a sense, live forever. People would know her name long after she was gone, just as she knew Princess Grace and Katharine Hepburn and Audrey Hepburn and Vivien Leigh and Olivia de Havilland.

Sonora, however, was sadly lacking in classes that were going to help her achieve that goal. As she scanned the list of common careers, she was not impressed at all by what she saw. It was all right, as far as it went, but it was so very…practical. Not really to her taste at all, most of it.

This, she knew, would make her family very happy – maybe. Sage would be happy, she thought, and Dad. Her other family…well, they would be happy to hear which practical things she thought sounded vaguely interesting, so she might not spend her whole life ‘acting a fool’ in public quoting old movies and daydreaming all the time, but she wasn’t sure how useful a conversation about how her Sonora classes could apply to a practical magical career would be with them. For one thing, her mom and her mom’s family and her dad’s extended family were all Muggles, who knew next to nothing about the magical world and careers in it. For another thing, they also did not seem eager to reduce their ignorance on the topic. They would deny it and she had never asked anyway, but she was pretty sure that they were all extremely relieved that Dad had eventually turned up alive again, as this meant the freaks could congregate together and only liaise with the normal family members on occasions where the groups were large enough and the rituals set enough that they could get by without discussing Some Things.

However, since her family wasn’t here, she wasn’t really sure their opinion mattered much, and was more concerned with whether she knew enough about magical careers to either keep up with the kids who had been raised in magical families or be helpful to the kids who came from the Muggle world, as she had done most of her growing up there herself, before Dad had wandered in stage left and Sage had started taking a greater and greater portion of the role of Primary Caretaker.

She was sitting next to Mab, and so took the other girl’s announcement that Aurors needed Defense Against the Dark Arts as an indication that Mab wished to work together. Morgan grinned and nodded. “Yep,” she agreed. “Which is about all I know about them,” she admitted. “My step-mom’s a mediwitch, though, and she needed…a little bit of everything, I think,” she said. “Except maybe Care of Magical Creatures, since she doesn’t really go get things to make potions out of, she just needs to know what goes in which ones and what they’re good for.” She scanned the list again. “Do you think we should, like, draw one of those charts where you draw lines between the things that match? Or get some tape and tape these sheets together to make one? It’ll be really crowded since some things take more than one class, but I think teachers usually like charts.”

16 Morgan Garrett Two heads are better than one, said the Hydra. 1470 0 5

Esme Brockert

March 15, 2020 11:18 PM

Not mine by Esme Brockert

Study Hall-or rather the exercises they did in it-was the most pointless "class "at Sonora for Esme. Nothing against Mr. Row, who seemed perfectly inoffensive-as well as being rather good looking admittedly-but she just did not need these exercises. Literally. First of all, she was only a first year, so it was much too soon to be worrying about things like this. Secondly, well, she was a pureblood girl from a good family. She was going to be a socialite married to a respectable pureblood man. Esme was not going to have a career.

This was not, however, the case with the majority of her classmates. The only other pureblood girls here were her cousin, Sapphire and Leonor De Matteo. Everyone else was going to probably have to work, unfortunately for them. Some of them might actually want to, but most of them would not have a choice either way because of financial reasons. Unfortunately for her , that meant she had to suffer through these exercises. They weren't hard but Esme had other homework that she could be doing. Things that she needed to be successful witch and not someone incompetent at magic. True, everyone had their own level of magical talent, but they still had to learn the spells.

There was also the absurd idea that some people-common in the muggle world, and thus probably among her classmates-had that working was preferable and that there was something wrong with not wanting to. Esme thought this might be a mentality they took in order to feel better about having to submit to a daily grind. And it was fine if they wanted to but they needn't look down on people like her. Or think she was being oppressed. Never mind that there were girls like Allegra and Sapphire whom were very shy and for whom working would be...difficult. It might not have been the nicest thing to think but really Esme could only see them ever getting hired somewhere because they were Brockerts. And working would only be something that stressed them out. On the other hand, her older sister would make a wonderful mother.

She appreciated though that just because a class or assignment did not apply to her personally did not mean that she did not have to take or do it. After all, everyone had to take Flying Lessons and this was not nearly as bad as that was. Few things were worse than making people who were bad at or did not want to do athletics do them the way Uncle Eustace tried to make her cousins Jasper and Christopher play Quidditch and ended up totally turning them off of the sport. She had been rather proud of her little brother for his refusal over the holidays.

And the things that Esme could think of that were worse than that, were done by Topaz.

Today's specific exercise seemed like one that was ironically easier for some of the people who didn't need it than those who did. Of course, half-bloods would have some idea what careers the magical world had and what classes they needed too and for all the Crotalus knew, some of them were rich enough that they'd never need to work either. Of course, their culture had brainwashed them to think they had to or they were less of a person.

Still, Esme-as she had to do this anyway-was willing to be a help to people. She turned to the person next to her and asked "Would you like to work together?"

11 Esme Brockert Not mine 1479 0 5

Sadie-Lake Chalmers

March 26, 2020 7:33 AM

Um... by Sadie-Lake Chalmers

Sadie took a seat in study hall. She kind of liked this class, if it counted as a class. They talked about fairly normal things here, most of the time. Things like homework planning and time management. That was honestly less of an issue for Sadie. Without electronic devices, with their constant rabbit hole of never-ending content to scroll and swipe through, without her mother roping her in for photo shoots, she honestly verged on having too much time. Even tasks like painting her nails, which she thought of as time-consuming, had shrunk down in terms of the time they filled, now that there wasn't the need to look online for inspiration or document the process.

Okay, sometimes the things they were talking about time-managing were weird, like how you balanced your potions homework with Quidditch training. Still, it was nice to have a class which didn't want to bite you or burn you or hex you. And they got to call their teacher 'Mr. Row' instead of 'Professor' which just always made him seem a bit more chill than everyone else.

He was another reason to like this class. Honestly with those #BlueEyes and #DesignerStubble, he could probably have done pretty well on Instagram. He was probably the third most instagrammable staff member, and it annoyed her that she had been unable to stop herself automatically ranking them that way. Their potions professor was both very pretty and had a Definite Aesthetic. That would turn some people off, of course, but it was eye catching and memorable. Professor Marsh just edged Mr. Row out, in that they were both broadly good-looking guys but Professor Marsh just seemed a bit more Instagram's type. He had #HipsterChic and #CoolVibes, whilst Mr. Row would appeal to those who liked the #BoyNextDoor style. He didn't have a super distinctive look, and her mom was always saying you needed a whole aesthetic, not just a pretty face, but if he marketed his face right, it could work. He might just edge it over #HipsterCool if he went for sharing video clips too. His accent was #TotesAdorable - or perhaps #TotesHot would be better, because most guys didn't want to pitch themselves as 'adorable.' She liked the way he said 'hello Sadie' and not just cos he, like the rest of the staff, observed her preference for dropping the stupid second half of her name. She liked the way the vowels bounced about when he said it.

That also snapped her to, making her come back to this world, where how many likes his face would get was not relevant. Where he was a person, not a brand image. And gawd, why did she think like this? Why could she not switch it off? It wasn't like any of it mattered here.

Getting some kind of cute dog would probably help his branding too. Maybe a labrador - something solid and traditional - or perhaps he could quirk it up a bit with plucky little rescue mutt. That would make him seem sweet and wholesome, even though she could more imagine it fitting with Professor Marsh- Enough. It was time for class. And they seemed to have an actual assignment today too. To look through classes and career lists and just... work out what to do with their lives. Right. No big deal then.

#SuchABigDeal

She couldn't help but feel slightly screwed. She barely had her feet planted in this world, which was going to make it impossible to know what classes and careers might suit her, plus it wasn't like she had had any solid ideas back in her own world, other than not turning into her mother. Something quiet. Something where she could fade into the background… But the only thing that came to mind for that was ‘Librarian’ and that did not seem her at all. She really didn’t love books enough for that.

She knew that part of the point of looking at this was to give them ideas, but she wasn't convinced she would be able to come up with a suitable plan. She really wanted to be able to make some good suggestions, to prove to herself she wasn’t doomed, and to prove to Mr. Row that she wasn’t stupid, even though she had a creeping suspicion that she might be. She glanced around at her classmates, wondering if they all had solid ideas what they wanted to do with their lives. Was she really supposed to be able to plan it out now? She was currently struggling to plan a ball ensemble, let alone a whole career trajectory.

She had ended up sat next to Esme, gravitating she supposed towards the familiar face. She didn’t really have any actual friends still, but Esme appeared to have no overt hostility towards her, and it couldn’t just be born of not being aware Sadie existed (which could easily have been the case with some of their other classmates) because they shared a room. She was pretty relieved too when Esme asked if she’d like to work together. She thought her room-mate might know more than she did about this sort of thing.

“Yeah, that’d be great,” she said quietly, but with a friendly smile. She shuffled some of the papers, glancing over them to see if an obvious starting point leapt out at her. It did not. “He said something about what we want to study,” she added, “Do we get a choice in that?” Now that she came to ask, it rang a vague bell as something that had been mentioned to them at orientation, and she hoped she didn’t seem #TotallyClueless for needing to ask but there had been like… a lot to take in. Especially since she, unlike other people, had been starting right from ‘So, magic is real..’

13 Sadie-Lake Chalmers Um... 1480 0 5

Esme Brockert

April 04, 2020 12:00 PM

Helping out by Esme Brockert

Esme gave her roommate a pleasant smile. Sadie seemed like a really nice girl. She was quiet and reserved but Esme didn't see those as bad things. She didn't understand why people sometimes did. Allegra was those things and she was one of the sweetest kindest people that the first year knew. On the other hand, Uncle Eustace was loud and very eager to force his unasked for opinion on everyone and he was one of the worst people that she knew, along with Topaz. Her uncle was a better example though for this particular point as her cousin did not generally tend to be loud. The Aladren was quiet and sneaky.

Besides, loud boisterous types, even when they were not awful people-her uncle went around bullying children and, they all speculated, his wife-were irritating . Esme would far rather be around her sister or her roommate than most Pecaris. She usually tried to avoid being around people in that particular house. Of course, part of that was that she doubted she had much in common with them. Esme had zero interest in Quidditch or "adventures" or pranks. Pranks were not just immature and stupid, they were mean. Usually they were designed to have a laugh at someone else's expense. Besides, the people who did them were usually inclined to target people who were considered weaker. Which tended to be the quieter, more sensitive types.

Honestly, some things Topaz did could be considered "pranks" but the fourth year didn't see them that way and if you dared call them that within earshot of her, it would not go well for you. Topaz much preferred the term "experiments". Or revenge if directed at her roommate. The Aladren insisted there was a difference because she claimed she was doing something to "better the intellectual development of humanity". Esme found this claim to be nonsense as she didn't see how it "bettered humanity" to have Allegra be a nervous wreck. Or what the experiment exactly was, unless it was on what it took to reduce someone to a fragile state. Topaz, naturally, claimed that it was because Esme did not have the intellectual capability to understand them. Which was more nonsense.

She hated Topaz so much. So very very much.

Anyway, it was clear to the first year that Sadie was new to this world and needed guidance so Esme was happy to help her. While the Crotalus was generally not as nice as her sisters or some of her cousins, she knew that it would not be fair or kind to let her flounder around on her own when the magical world was something Esme had known since birth. If it were the other way around, certainly she hoped someone would help her. Although she hoped never to have to survive in the Muggle world and as she was obviously not a squib or she wouldn't be at Sonora, it was unlikely. Though she supposed if she married someone foreign and had to adjust to a new country, it would be a similar situation to what Muggleborns went through. Esme would have to learn the customs of her new home and possibly a whole different language.

"We don't really...get much choice until after CATS with regards to classes, but as for what you want to do as a career, yes, of course you can choose." Esme figured Sadie probably meant the former. Certainly, the other Crotalus did not expect someone was going to tell her what career she had to have. Sure, that did happen, sometimes men wanted their sons to take over the family business but that didn't seem to apply to Sadie. Unless Sadie's parents wanted her to take over theirs. Honestly, Esme needed to get to know her roommate better. "CATS is this big test that, well, tells you what you can continue. Obviously, the better grades you get the better options. Like, say you do well in everything but hate a particular class or professor for some reason, you can drop it. What you continue also depends on what you want to do career wise. Healers, for example, have to continue everything but Care of Magical Creatures. Presumably, if you want to heal animals, you have to take that too."

Esme continued. "You also can take electives starting in third year and after this year, we no longer have to take Flying Lessons." This last point was something that made the first year quite happy. Flying was worse than Study Hall. Neither were things Esme found especially useful or necessary, but at least Study Hall did not involve athletics.

11 Esme Brockert Helping out 1479 0 5

Sadie-Lake Chalmers

April 13, 2020 6:04 AM

Thanks by Sadie-Lake Chalmers

Mr. Row had said they could choose what to study. Now Esme was saying they couldn’t really. At least not until later. And it depended on their grades. Maybe Mr. Row had meant choosing what they wanted to study at college? Also, if you wanted to be something called a healer you had to do everything, and even more if you wanted to be an animal healer. From the names of those, that sounded like ‘doctor’ and ‘veterinarian’ to Sadie and she was not sure why they couldn’t just call them that. Though at least she would have known how to spell ‘animal healer’ which she guessed was a plus point. She could not see herself being either of those things. She didn’t think she was smart enough or okay enough with gross stuff.

Then Esme started talking about electives starting in third year. Right. So, they did have choices about their studies? Soon? Sadie shuffled through the papers they’d been given, not wanting to be total dead weight in this conversation, until she found the one with that heading.

“These?” she confirmed, sliding the paper slightly over so Esme could see, even though she presumably had her own copy. Sadie’s eyes skimmed down them, trying to work out where to begin even asking questions. She was barely getting a handle on ‘what is a Charm vs a Transfiguration’ and she took both of those subjects. And whilst she could see how useful they might be in everyday life, she couldn’t yet imagine a career that built on either of them. Now there was a list of a load of other subjects that she didn’t know anything at all about…

“Does this say there’s a lesson about… predicting the future?” she queried, as she read the definition of Divination. “Why aren’t we using that here, to work out what we’re going to do with our lives? Or like… getting an adult whose good at it to do it,” she amended. She was well aware that just because she could do certain kinds of magic didn’t mean she was remotely skilled yet, but presumably someone like Mr. Row could be good at it. Could he just look into a crystal ball and see what they’d do with their lives? That would have saved a lot of difficulty.

13 Sadie-Lake Chalmers Thanks 1480 0 5

Esme Brockert

April 15, 2020 3:06 PM

You're welcome by Esme Brockert

Esme nodded. "Yes, those are the electives Sonora offers, though some people who are really...smart and into school can sometimes take independent studies on classes Sonora doesn't teach like Ancient Runes or Arithmancy but most people don't." Topaz, of course, did but Esme wasn't about to mention that to her roommate and give her cousin the satisfaction of the first year telling someone that she was smart. And it wasn't like Sadie knew the Aladren anyway, Esme only mentioned independent studies so her roommate would realize that was an option if she wanted to do it.

"Yes, Divination but most people think it's nonsense, my grandfather included. However, it was a course before he became headmaster here. People who can actually do it are called Seers and they're rare. Plus, the things it shows are usually vague and up for interpretation. " Esme explained. Not that she needed Divination to predict her future anyway. She was going to get married, have children and be a pureblood socialite. She realized though that this was obviously not the case for Sadie. Well, okay, marriage and children were possible, of course. People other than society purebloods did those things too. Sadie being a pureblood socialite, however, obviously wasn't going to happen as one had to actually be a pureblood for that.

"If you ask me," Esme continued, "I don't know why we're doing this now. We're only first years, we have plenty of time to worry about our futures. Right now, we should concentrate on our schoolwork and having fun before having adult responsibilities thrust upon us. Especially for people who are still adjusting to the magical world. Besides, people might not want the same thing at eleven as they do at eighteen. "

She sighed " But we still have to do the assignment. What kind of stuff are you interested in?" Esme asked, still wanting to help. "Are there any subjects you especially like or do well in?"

11 Esme Brockert You're welcome 1479 0 5