Through a Glass Darkly: Spies and Spying; 3rd Period

[tricksy-spy.livejournal.com]

Aly was thumbing through what quite possibly looked like last year's yearbook when the class started to file in.  She looked up at them with a grin and watched as they all found a seat.  At each desk was a copy of the syllabus.

Rising to her feet, she nodded in welcome.  "Good morning, all.  Hopefully your weekend treated you well?  You should each find a syllabus at your desk.  Please go ahead and review it now then let me know if you have any questions."   She hopped up on her desk to sit, facing the class, while they looked it over and  answered any questions that arose.

"Now that that's out of the way, and we all know what we'll be doing  in here for the next 11 weeks," she said with a mischievious grin. "Let's get started."

She went to the whiteboard and quickly wrote down ten points.

1. No matter where you are, act like you belong.
2. Behave purposefully.  Especially if you have no purpose.
3. Blend in.  Become a "gray man."
4. Develop assessment skills by practicing even in circumstances in which you are merely a bystander.
5. Learn to trust your instincts to make decisions.  Right or wrong at first, they will get better.
6. Never second-guess your decisions at the time.  Do analyze them later.
7. Be aware that you may be overlooking things in your surroundings, especially if they are familiar to you.
8. Accept the fact that some level of deception is a necessary part of the job.
9. Don't be embarrassed to be suspicious of other people's intentions.
10.  Improve your memory.

She looked from the points to the students for a minute to try to gauge their reactions.  Still stroking her black beads, she sat back on her desk.  "Those are the ten basic rules (they're more like guidelines to steal someone's schtick) to thinking like a spy.  The eleventh should really be 'do whatever works then run with it and remember that there are no such things as rules,' but ten is such a nice, round number to start off with."

"What do these 'rules' really mean?  How should they be applied?  That, my friends, is the topic of the classroom discussion for today.  Ask questions, hash out what they mean, either with each other or ask me."

"The tenth point, however, is one I brought up last week and something we'll keep hitting - hopefully not literally - over the semester.  Spies don't generally get to carry around little notepads and make notes whenever they need to remember something.  And keeping written codes or directions on your person is a very good way to get caught.  So.  Your memory is the most important tool."  She grinned.  "It can do something so small as remember that Molly over there was wearing a light green shirt last week.  Or that Bridge wears a uniform every day."  She glanced over at Bridge with a chuckle.  "Which might not particularly help blending in, you know."

She stood up, stretching slightly.  "One of the main ways to train your memory is to just using it more.  So this week, I want you to work on remembering this list of words - in order, mind you.  I find that silly associations work best for me using a technique called 'chaining.'  You link each item to the next through images that incorporate both.  So if I'm trying to remember banana, violin, coffee, I'll remember a banana playing a violin, then a violin drinking coffee.  It's silly, but odd associations tend to stick in your mind longer."

On the board, she wrote

notebook
peas
pirate ship
computer
panda bear
lantern
frame
queen
flour
ring
cell phone
coffee beans
rug
llama
tree
piano
dress
glasses
acorn
sword
cat
castle

"Very well then, try to practice the guidelines I set out and come back next week prepared to tell what you did and how they worked.  Also memorise that list and let me know if it was too easy, too hard, whichever.  Oh!  And the TA's for the class are Eric Weiss and Bridge Carson so they should  be able to help you out if I'm not around for some reason."

[OOC: *blinks at omglong" If you haven't seen my OOC post here, please go take a look at it.  Also, the ten rules were taken with gratitude from the Handbook of Practical Spying by Jack Barth.  I'll be around all day and please wait for the OCD threads. OCD is Up!]

Comments

SAS: Sign In 9/12

[tricksy-spy.livejournal.com]

All Collapsey-Like if'n you please

Re: SAS: Sign In 9/12

[cantgetnorelief.livejournal.com]

S.T. Anders

SAS: Syllabus Questions?

[tricksy-spy.livejournal.com]

Here's the Place for Them

Re: SAS: Syllabus Questions?

[http://users.livejournal.com/weissguy_/]

"Hey, thanks for the TA-ship. I appreciate it," Weiss said. "Let me know what you need, for I am guy who is TA guy."

SAS: Take or Pass Notes During Lecture 9/12

[tricksy-spy.livejournal.com]

Be ready for mockery if caught chatting too much here.

Re: SAS: Take or Pass Notes During Lecture 9/12

[bound2blade.livejournal.com]

Of course, Sakurazaki is taking attentative and detailed notes. Of course, they're written in Japanese. She seems to have made particular note of rules number three and eight, despite that this was all very familiar to her.

A few times, she even had to stop for a moment, her eyes drifting away, thinking of a small, four year old little girl, sitting rigidly in a desk too big for her, inscribing the same notes.

If she had any questions, Sakurazaki would probably not ask them. Aly-sensei was certainly not her Shinmei Ryuu masters, but questions had always ended up badly with them.

She had trouble copying down the list. For some reason, her vision was getting a little blurry...

Re: SAS: Take or Pass Notes During Lecture 9/12

[cantgetnorelief.livejournal.com]

Anders wrote down all the rules and the list of items to memorize, then started looking around the classroom for random little tidbits about his classmates that might be easy to remember.

Re: SAS: Take or Pass Notes During Lecture 9/12

[courier-gavin.livejournal.com]

Jake actually took good notes. At first. Then she got bored and started doodling little cartoons of her fellow classmates. The Aeryn doodle got a huge bazooka, the Seely doodle got fangs and a grrargh speechbubble, and the Molly doodle was lifting a car over her head.

SAS: Discussion of the "Rules" 9/12

[tricksy-spy.livejournal.com]

Ask Aly questions or discuss them amongst yourselves. How do you think they should be applied? Do they seem effective? What exactly does each mean?

Re: SAS: Discussion of the "Rules" 9/12

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

Bridge raises his hand.

Re: SAS: Discussion of the "Rules" 9/12

[can_be_more]

Looking at the rules, Aeryn's pretty sure she has most of these down. However.

"About not second-guessing your decisions at the time," she says. "What do you do if something goes wrong and you have to change the plan?"

Re: SAS: Discussion of the "Rules" 9/12

[socksofcool.livejournal.com]

Seely frowned in thought as he looked over the points. "So rules one and two mean act like you have a right and reason to be there and people will think you do?"

Re: SAS: Discussion of the "Rules" 9/12

[cantgetnorelief.livejournal.com]

Anders raised his hand. "So does number seven mean that we should keep on our toes even more in situations we're used to than we should in unfamiliar ones? Just because we're taking it for granted that we think we know our way around, or what's going on?"

Re: SAS: Discussion of the "Rules" 9/12

[http://users.livejournal.com/weissguy_/]

Weiss raised his hand.

Re: SAS: Discussion of the "Rules" 9/12

[greenmagebriar.livejournal.com]

Briar raised his hand.

Re: SAS: Discussion of the "Rules" 9/12

[cat-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

Schrodinger raised his hand, but didn't even bother to wait to be called on.

"What if we have certain physical features that make it difficult to blend in? And here I'm talking about my ears."

Re: SAS: Discussion of the "Rules" 9/12

[bound2blade.livejournal.com]

Sakurazaki listened to the others' questions quietly while she debated in her head whether or not to raise her hand.

At one point, she even slowly started to creep up, making it only about as high as her ponytail before, with a sigh, she dropped it down, folding it with the other on her desk, and turning her head to look out a window instead.

She already knew the answer to her question, after all. She's always known the answer. However many, Setsuna. How ever many it takes to bury, cover up, erradicate the one you really are.

Re: SAS: Discussion of the "Rules" 9/12

[2-twin-devils-2.livejournal.com]

The twins raise a hand in unison.

SAS: Memory Game

[tricksy-spy.livejournal.com]

I have played this one too much this week.

How's your memory for faces? Comment to say how you did.

Face Memory Test (http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/java/facemem2.html)

Re: SAS: Memory Game

[bruiser-in-pink.livejournal.com]

Molly got 8 bits correct on her first try.

Re: SAS: Memory Game

[can_be_more]

Aeryn keeps looking for things to be symmetrical. She gets seven correct bits her first and second tries, and anything she does it again after that, she's getting nine or ten.

Re: SAS: Memory Game

[socksofcool.livejournal.com]

Seely consistently got nines and tens on his tries.

Re: SAS: Memory Game

[bound2blade.livejournal.com]

Sakurazaki got nine out of tens parts right on the first try, and a few following attempts, but, once she recognized all the different pieces, could blow through them quickly with only occational error.

SAS: Talk to Aly After Class 9/12

[tricksy-spy.livejournal.com]

She's more than happy to chat.

SAS: OOC 9/12

[tricksy-spy.livejournal.com]

For this is, indeed, how the world shall end. Not with a bang, but with an OOC thread.

Re: SAS: OOC 9/12

[cantgetnorelief.livejournal.com]

So I got distracted from Trickster's Queen because I managed to get a copy of the first Song of the Lioness book . . . and I finished it in under an hour. *cries*