Advanced Cultural Studies, Monday, Fourth Period

[jedigrammarians]

"See, kids, no matter what anyone tells you, you can learn valuable lessons from fiction, and not just the kind where people spends millions of words arguing over literary merit." Was this almost a lecture today? Perish the thought.

"Now the lesson of today's story is that no matter how well thought out your plan is, and how much you trust your partners, it's hard to account for other people and just how dumb they can be."

Shop Class; Tuesday, First Period [09/07].

[special_rabbit]

Based on the sheer amount of scrap metal around the shop that morning, as well as the welding torches waiting for the students at their stations along with their usual protective gear, it shouldn't be too hard for them to figure out what they might be up to today.

"Morning, class!" Amaya greeted them with her usual nod. "We're going to keep learning some of the basics of the equipment and the materials we'll be using a lot this semester, and this week's a big one for me, because this material is my bread and butter. Today, we're working with metal. Specifically, we're working on welding metal.

"Welding is basically using high levels of heat to melt pieces of metal into each other, fusing them together when they cool. We've got these nifty little hand torches," and, of course, she was going to pick one up and fire it off a little for display, "which is why we've also got these heavy-duty masks." She set the welding torch down to pick up the welding helmet that could almost look like a costume piece from a bad science fiction movie. "This process involves a lot of heat and light waves that can be bad for your eyes, as well as sparks and tiny sharpnel that'll likely be even worse for them! So safety first! This isn't the Danger Shop, after all, so we want to keep those trips to the clinic down to a minimum.

"We've got plenty of material to work with today, too, with all these scraps that can easily be put together into something with the power of welding! I've got some instruction sheets if you'd like to make anything in particular, but there's nothing wrong with letting your imagination take over, either. Make something entirely new, or try one of the projects on the she sheets. The point of today's class is to get you familiar with the process of welding and the equipment. Everyone, put your masks on." She even did so herself, but kept her voice strong even behind the muffled coverage. "It might be a little hard to see exactly what I'm doing, but it's important, because if you're watching me, you don't want to be staring directly at the flashes. I'm going to walk you through how to make a spider using mostly old spoons."

And she did just that, showing off the little guy when she was finished and passing it around so they could have a closer look at it. "So, as I said, all we're doing is basically melting the metal at the joints so that they fuse together and connect. If you look closely, you can see all those joints in the various pieces that make the spider. Pretty simple in concept, right? So it's just a matter of knowing how to shape and piece it all together to actually make something.

"IF you're not entirely new to welding or you have a particular idea," she concluded, "go ahead and weld together what you want, but if it's somewhat new, I encourage you to try the spider or perhaps some other simple projects, like a flower or a bird or a dragon. I've got instructions or I can help walk you through some of it. Or just experiment with some parts and putting them together and see what you end up with. Today's about the equipment and the material more than the final results, although I'm eager to see what you guys have to offer at the end of the class.

"Any questions? If not, let's go ahead and grab some scrap and get to work!"

Fear in Literature, Tuesday 4th period

[intheeyeofthebeholding]

Jon set his bag down at the front and pulled out his laptop, opening it to the text, then turned to the board and wrote on it: The Buried. He nodded decisively and took a deep breath before starting.

"The Buried is the fear of being buried alive, obviously. More generally speaking, claustrophobia, fear of being trapped, fear of things crashing down around you, physically or metaphorically. It's an extremely common fear. Even just choosing among Poe's stories, there are four or five you could use for it, and he's far from the only one."

He turned back to his laptop. "In Poe's The Premature Burial, we get the fear of both the physical and metaphorical burying - the protagonist is terrified of being buried while alive, but also terrified that all his meticulous preparations will fail and everything will go wrong.

"He begins by relating a number of stories of others being buried alive. These are, in case it isn't clear, fictional. There are a few stories of people being buried alive - look up Alice Blunden if you're interested - but many of the most famous are apocryphal, and the problem was never as widespread as legend or Poe's narrator would make it out to be, although there are a number of known designs of coffins and tombs that could be used to alert the living that somebody buried was not, in fact, dead. There are no recorded uses of them actually helping, but again, the fear was common."

He looked out to the class. "So, how do you feel this fear is reflected in the story? How well does Poe do it? Which of the included stories in the narrative best embodies it?" How best could you get your teacher to go on tangents about this or other things?

"And for next week, please read Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year and be ready to discuss it."


[ETA: Next week's.]

Ethics, Tuesday, September 7, 2021

[sith_happened]

"Hello, everyone," Anakin said, coming into the classroom and leaning against his desk in the front. "Sunday was yet another example of the island imposing its will upon us. Now most of the time this is a benevolent, if embarrassing, occurrence. I have been here many years and the island has turned me into a talking pony, a gangster, a child, a teenager, a toy, a cat, and so on and so on. I also ended up eating everything with my hands and having a neck tattoo that misspelled my wife's name last week, but Kitty assured us that was because of some kind of screw up with the alcohol manufacturer."

He blew out a breath. "So, my question is: on this island how do you learn to reconcile the idea that your free will can just be overridden at any moment? Is free will even that important a concept in your society?"