Fun with Magic | Friday, First period

[nuclear_snide]

The plan had been for class to meet in the Danger Shop, but the day was far too beautiful to spend it cooped up indoors - Bob had had plenty of that, thank you very much. So, class had been handwavily informed to meet on the lawn instead.

"So." Bob eyed them all critically. "Last semester I taught a class on defence against magic. Where mostly what I learned was that half of you are far too nervous around magic to do any good with it, half of you take it for granted it can do just about anything, and just about all of you - look, are you teenagers or what? Don't you ever just...cut loose?" He sighed.

"So this time, we're using magic for fun. You'll be learning what it can and can't do, and hopefully getting a bit of a more accurate picture and a bit more at ease."

He looked around them once more and nodded. "Right. I'm Hrothbert of Bainbridge. You can call me Bob or Sir, whichever you prefer. Anders is my TA for the class, so any questions you don't want to ask me, ask him. Now I know you're probably all tired of introductions by now, but I don't care. Introduce yourselves, and let me know what magic you can do, what other talents you might have, what you're familiar with, and so forth."

He picked a random student and stared at them expectantly.

Survive the Island, Thusday 3rd Period.

[wrongkindofsith]

Cara had informed her students to meet her at the Danger Shop today, which was set to its default appearance.

"Congratulations, you are apparently the only students at this school with any small scrap of sense between you," she said once they'd arrived. "Now normally it's expected to do introductions, but I've taught all three of you before, so we'll skip those and assume you're here because you want to be more prepared for the dangers to life and limb that crop up here."

She fiddled with a control and a podium appeared with a small, green, scaly creature standing on it. "We'll start with something dangerous to your dignity. If you've had the good fortune not to encounter one of these yet, this is a gremlin, for the most part they live in the ducts, and I'm told if you say the word 'Marshakin' three times one will appear and bite the nearest Skywalker." Though it had been a squirrel that had told her that. "They may look more ugly than anything, but their fangs are sharp and coated in a venom that will leave you convinced that you are someone else entirely, often some place else entirely, and you will act accordingly. The island being what it is, you will somehow find appropriate clothing and props to go along with whatever lunacy your mind concocts. When the venom wears off, you will remember everything, in excessive clarity, and if you're truly unfortunate, there will be recordings." Because the universe hated joy.

"So, I want you to memorise what a gremlin looks like and discuss potential ways of dealing with them that avoid harm to all parties involved." Because trying to kill the little bastards would just make them targets. "Try not to get too close to the fake gremlin, I don't trust this place not to have given it working venom."

Sexual Safety [period 2, Friday]

[begmetwice.livejournal.com]

"Good morning!" Irene called, waving from her perch on top of the desk at the front of the room. She had on the desk a box that might look familiar to a couple people in the class. But, probably more distracting were the items on the table she'd set up at the front of the room -- a fishbowl of condoms, a colorful display of 28-day birth control pills, lubricants, spermicide, female condoms, and -- everyone's favorite -- dental dams. While other teachers had opted to take their students outdoors today, Irene unfortunately had props for today, and didn't want to risk them blowing away in the wind or being carried off by errant squirrels. Instead, she'd left the windows of her classroom open, at least, which might hopefully provide a distraction from all the...that. Sorry, kids.

"Welcome to Sexual Safety. For those of you I don't know, my name's Irene Adler -- Ms. Adler's fine if you'd like, and depending on the day I might answer to my given name, but none of that 'professor' business in here, all right?" She flashed them a smile, and plucked up the box. "Due to the sensitive nature of our discussions in here, I'm going to go ahead and apologize preemptively if I embarrass any of you. I'm not one for using euphemisms to tiptoe around sex politely, like we ought to be ashamed of it -- the point of this course is to teach you all how to be safe out there, and we can't do that unless we look at things frankly. So if you ever need to excuse yourself, anything like that, it's no problem, and no questions asked. But -- I know it can be difficult to have questions and not want to vocalize them in front of your peers, necessarily. That's what the box is for. Drop it in here anonymously, and I'll answer it the next class, the best I can."

She replaced the box on her desk, hopping off and wandering over to her table of goodies. "Now, as a necessity, I'm assuming you all know the basics of how sex works. If you don't know -- and I don't just mean heterosexual intercourse, here -- and you need clarification on anything, please do see me after class. I have plenty of resources to help you out there. But we're going to be approaching this class from a standpoint of already understanding how one might contract an STD -- sexually transmitted disease -- or possibly get pregnant."

She gestured to the table. "This is an assortment of the types of things you should be using if you're having sex or planning to. There's a little label next to each item to tell you what it is and what it does. Take a few minutes, explore, and then come back to your seats. It's still the first day, even if we're accelerating things. I'm not skipping the bloody introductions or they'll have my head, I think."

[links in the comments are NSFW, but in a Planned Parenthood/Wikipedia kind of way.]

Practical Philosophy, Friday

[endsthegame]

Since the weather was tolerable, Ender had left the students a note to meet him on the dorm lawn. He was already there, seated on the ground, looking exhausted but also happy in an uncharacteristically dopey way. He'd left baby Val with Ben that morning - with difficulty, mind you. He greeted the arriving students with a, "Sit down in a circle, please." He smiled briefly. "Well, there aren't many of you, so I'll accept any formation that makes all of us more or less equal."

He had a bag of sandwiches and a bag of bottles of water with him, which he put in the middle of the circle.

"Welcome," he said. "My name is Andrew Skywalker. I'm an alumnus of this school; I graduated several years ago." That was all they needed to know, as far as he was concerned. "And you might be wondering what you signed on for."

"While 'philosophy' is in my class's title, we're not here primarily to talk about the philosophers of old or the specifics of particular lines of thought in philosophy. In this class, we try to put our own experiences into a greater perspective through conversation and debate. That means I expect some level of participation from all of you."

He smiled wryly. "That doesn't mean you always need to speak up about yourself," he said. "No topics are everything to everyone. If that week's subject veers too close to something you want to keep private, be my guest - just try and pitch in when someone else speaks. Ask questions."

"Because that's the point of this class: to ask questions of ourselves and of the people around us. You can even ask questions of me, if you feel the need. And maybe together we can get to the core of our joint and individual experiences." His mouth quirked a bit more. "That doesn't mean we're always going to be lingering on the existential questions - or staring at our belly buttons. It just means we're going to try and dig and come to some understanding about each other, ourselves, and the world."

He picked up a bottle of water. "As for today, let's open a dialogue," he said. "As far as I can tell, for most of you, this is all new. You just got here. How is it working for you? Are you elated? Annoyed? Don't want to be here? Achingly happy to be here? And for those of you who aren't - how has the past year treated you? Has there been anything that made you cry or made you think or made you wonder?"

"We can talk about that. Or you can bring up something else you feel is worth questioning. I consider most topics fair game, as long as they're brought up with regard for your fellow students. I can't claim knowledge on most, but I can claim an ability to annoy you with questions about just about anything."

He grabbed a sandwich from the bag. "If one of you wants to call themselves my TA, feel free," he said, "But I'm not sure we'll have much need of one with this group. Maybe we're all TAs, this time around."