Tarquin Fox-Reynolds
February 26, 2022 7:51 PM
Beginners - Library Refresher and Study Hall by Tarquin Fox-Reynolds
Tarquin had expected to be vaguely present and semi-responsible for the beginners today. Whilst they had been given a general introduction to the library facilities at the start of term, they had been told a lot of other things, both at that point and since, and previous experience had made him conclude that telling them once really wasn’t sufficient for them to be confident library users for the rest of their time here. So, he had expected to join Killian Row, the counselor, to deliver a library refresher session, and then leave them to their studies. Unfortunately, Killian was sick. He was the kind of person who absolutely wouldn’t let a small thing like that stand in the way of him coming into work, but luckily the more sensible forces of Killian’s girlfriend and his boss had combined to make him stay home. Which meant that Tarquin was covering study hall for the whole period.“Good morning,” he greeted the students, once they were assembled in the library. “Gather over here please,” he instructed, standing next to the huge wall of drawers that made up the library’s card catalogue. “Mr. Row is absent today, so you’ve got me for the whole of this period. We’re going to begin with a refresher of the library cataloguing and organisation system. After that, you’ll have some free time to work on your own studies, whether that’s homework, or doing some practical revision with adult supervision.” Given how new the first years were to magic, ‘with adult supervision’ was the only way they were supposed to be practising outside of class, which made study halls and office hours fairly essential things.
“So, as you may recall from your induction, the library catalogue works in multiple ways. You can either request for it to be alphabetical by title or author, or you can ask it to arrange itself by topic. Alphabetical by author, please,” he requested. The drawers sucked themselves in for a moment, like they had taken a deep breath. When they relaxed again, Tarquin pulled one of them open. “So, if I am looking for books by Bagshot I can go into B and… here they are.” He pulled out a little card. “You may then copy the necessary information down,” he indicated a pile of papers and quills nearby. “The cards are charmed, and cannot be removed from the area surrounding the catalogue. Please treat them nicely, and put them back where you found them when you are finished,” he added. Whilst the catalogue was fairly good at keeping itself neat and tidy, that was no reason for students to disrespect it, or not take a part in caring for the materials themselves. He tried to look serious and formidable as he delivered this message. He was never sure how well he pulled that off. On the one hand, he was somewhat looming, being over six foot tall, and with his dark hair and tendency not to smile and status as A Grumpy Old Man, there was every potential for being regarded as rather severe. However, he had the approximate build of a beanpole, and he knew he was really soft as butter and had never shouted at anyone in his life, and thought that maybe others could sense that too.
“You have a scavenger hunt. It lists various authors, titles, and topics which you will have to look up and write the reference numbers to. The catalogue will be arranged each of those ways for ten minutes. After that, anyone who needs more time can set the category to what they need. If you get done with a category before your peers, you’ll just have to wait for it to change.” He was not going to have a group of them all yelling contradictory terms at the catalogue. “You’ll also see there are questions about some of your books, which will not be covered by the card index.” These were things such as ‘Color of cover’ or ‘number of pages.’ “For those, you will have to go find the books, which should serve as a refresher on finding your way around the library.
“Once you have completed your worksheet, you may do homework or practise spells. Anyone who wants to do practical magic, please sit at that table, so I can easily supervise you.” He gestured to a large group work table.
“Unless there are any questions, you may begin.”
OOC: Welcome to study hall! Your character has several tasks here - the scavenger hunt, and then homework or practical magic practice. You may post about whatever part interests you. E.g. you can post them beginning the scavenger hunt and talking to a peer, or you can skip over that and just say they did it and get on with them studying. I've tried to make this class quite open, so that you get a chance to post them doing something that interests you.
In terms of what homeworks or practical spells they would have to work on, you are free to make it up within reason. E.g. you can invent a relevant homework based on what you've seen in class, or what you think first years would be learning. If you're unsure, you can ask on the OOC board or in chatzy.
There's also a spell list, which gives a rough guideline as to what they learn in each year.
If you are practising spells, please remember that you have adult supervision, and that Tarquin wouldn't allow things to get really out of hand.
Subthreads: Just checking in [Freya] by Fortune Ardovini
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Tarquin Fox-Reynolds
Beginners - Library Refresher and Study Hall
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Fortune Ardovini
March 02, 2022 6:07 PM
Just checking in [Freya] by Fortune Ardovini
Fortune was not quite sure what to make of the school librarian. He seemed big and a bit grumpy, this was naturally in line with how he thought librarians were supposed to be. After all, their job was to keep things nice and orderly, make everyone be quiet, and ensure that the books in their care remained safe. A mere secondary objective of theirs was to allow other people to read those books. However there was something about Mr. Fox-Reynolds that he couldn't quite figure out that seemed at odds with that image. Fortune just couldn't figure out what, and didn't really want to risk the man's wrath in trying.Besides, he had multiple objectives as today as well. His secondary one was to accomplish the tasks set before him by the librarian.. no wait, that was a third objective. The secondary objective was not to get the librarian mad at him... no.... that wasn't right either. That should probably be the primary objective. Right, and the third objective was to get the stuff done that the library wanted done. The secondary objective was the one he was most focused upon despite it not being the primary objective... anymore.
His main (but apparently not primary) objective was to continue to rouse interest in the Quidditch team among his classmates. To that end, he found Freya Curtis. He hadn't talked to her much yet, but had been through enough roll calls to match up the person to the name on the Quidditch sign-up sheet. In theory, she was already signed-up to try out for the team, but he wanted to try and gauge her level of interest, perhaps she could be recruited into helping in Xander and his quest.
"Hi Freya," Fortune greeted her as he approached, "How are things going?" He really hoped he was sounding casual and nonchalant. It was also at this point where he wasn't quite sure what to say next. Apparently his primary objective was to keep the librarian happy which would require him to work on objective three a bit. "Can we work together a bit?"
OOC: I've purposefully left it wide open when during the class Fortune approaches Freya. Feel free to have the interaction happen whenever you'd like.
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Fortune Ardovini
Just checking in [Freya]
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