daybreakacademy | Get Your Nose In Those Books!

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Get Your Nose In Those Books!

Who: Sarona Gayle and anyone!
What: Tutoring Sessions are go!
Where: Around campus, Aube Floor 1 communal room, library, her dorm room, etc
When: First three weeks of March
Warnings: Language because Sarona, nothing else at the moment.

Midterms are done, but the work sure isn't.
Finals are just around the corner, so get your notes in order!

[You may have seen the flyers up around campus advertising her services. Sarona Gayle, Tutor Available, with her phone number and network ID present, hours set from day to day in different locations to make it easier for whoever she is helping. Even if it's a course she hasn't taken yet, don't think she won't be skimming the textbooks to look up what you need to know (she might just be using the occasion to learn enough so she can test out of it). Before classes, at lunch, in the evenings, or on the weekends, Sarona ready to work with whoever needs it.

Provided they care about learning. But even if it's some slacker, if a teacher recommended they get some help, she'll take them on for a test run. Sari doesn't give up on people who need to learn. Her methods might be just a bit inconventional though...

But it's fine really, no lasting damage.]

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[He chooses to meet up with Sarona when she's still in her room, since it means he gets to pet Ricktoria at the same time. Actually, that's his official reason for being there, because he sure as hell isnt going to tell someone he needs a tutor -- and he doesn't! He's very confident midterms went well. It's more...this new class he's picked up. He isn't having trouble, and he hasn't had time to have trouble, but he'd like to get ahead of the game if he can.]

Oh -- hey spanner, [like he's suddenly thought of something, not been sitting here thinking how best to casually bring it up] does your skinscription order have a suggested reading list? I know you got one... [Because it's her. Of course she has a suggested reading list. He's certain.]

[Sarona knows it's more than just Ricktoria making him want to show up, but she's not going to mock him for taking a chance to improve his education. Maybe the fact he feels he has to hide it. Nothing to be ashamed of in learning.

But she is get tired of being called a "spanner" like it's some cute name and not a fucking wrench.]

Well spudnut, that's the fun of Inkmetal Forge. The philosophy is personal learning to encourage a unique interpretation and development of the craft. Having everything written down for wide consumption defeats the purpose when people will just copy what people have done before them.

[Of course, she does not say that she doesn't have a reading list.]

[He likes learning!!! Definitely not ashamed of that. Unfortunately, when starting to learn something, it means you're automatically not good at it, and that is something he's ashamed of. And hey, he picked "spanner" because it was the cutest of the tool names! Takes some of the edge off of being a tool. Maybe don't be so good at fixing shit and you won't get that kind of nickname, think about that in the future.]

Well noooo shit. [Ugh! He likes that, but it isn't helpful right now.] All you assholes got a starting point, though. You don't know of one that's better than a dumb baby basic primer?

No one in Inkmetal started in Inkmetal. They got their intro to runes somewhere else and then eventually joined up. At the Forge most of the books are basic about different rune languages and what kinds of Inscriptions make for the best magical conduits. Stuff you could find in almost any Guild's shop. Anything you come up with for your tats is something you keep for your own personal collection.

[Which should be plenty hint enough in her mind for him to figure out exactly where he'll find the "reading" he needs.]

[Hrmn... He goes back to playing with Ricktoria, waving the wand in a way that bounces the strings for her enjoyment. He doesn't want the same boring books from any old Guild shop... He wants something cool and Sarona-approved... Damn it. Try to be coy and casual doesn't work when the other person is even better at it.]

I already have a textbook. I fucking like reading and I'm finding it boring as shit.

That's because textbooks are usually pretty fucking boring. I'm a certified nerds and even I admit that. They're just a means to an end, to me.

[She does get up then and reach over to her desk, where there is a stack of binders and notebooks. She grabs one of the largest binders and opens it up to reveal more notebooks and sheets and sheets of paper covered in notes organized inbetween them.]

Best way to figure things out is to keep your own notes. Cut out all the padding and keep the meat of it.

[He'd deny it, but he looks at that binder the same way Ricktoria looks at the toy before she darts forward in a leap. Sari notes........... That's gotta be The Good Shit.

...He can't just take it, but he doesn't want to ask, either... W-weakly holds out...his free hand...please save his life]

[Sometimes Maverick is too pathetic. Can't he just say what he means and what he wants? She rolls her eyes.]

If you want to borrow my notes, you can, but I'm not giving you all of them. Like I said, we don't believe in copycats and lazy bums. I'll give you what you need to get started, but then you have to put in the work on your own.

[This time, he can't suppress the exasperated groan and roll of his eyes.]

No fucking shit. Seriously, spanner, how fucking little do you think of me? If I was gonna half-ass this shit, do you really think I'd fucking bring it up to you? Just get me out of the dumbass handholding phase!

[She's not annoyed by his response, but she's not swayed either.]

I barely know you like this, don't act like we're best friends with each other or anything. Most of the time we're just passing joke insults at each other. Do you know how many kids I've tutored over two years here who just want the easy way out? Who want answers but don't want to learn anything?

Maybe you're someone who wouldn't dare think of it, or maybe it was your plan all along. We don't share a lot of the same classes, so I haven't seen you in action. I don't want people to have a false impression of me and what I do, so I'm laying it out up front.

[UGHHH. He flops onto his back, muttering curses to himself until Ricktoria comes to sniff curiously at his hair, then lie down on his face to muffle him even more. Suffocate.

Cut off from any more words, he opts to tiredly flip her the bird instead.]

Yeah, we already established you're not my type.

[God, why are some people so melodramatic? She drops the heavy binder right on his stomach.]

If you want you can make some copies of the basic stuff in the front.

[The middle finger changes to a thumbs up, but he doesn't move. Ricktoria's all settled in, he can't disturb her. He does, however, give a muffled,]

Thaaaank you, spanner.

Yeah, yeah. [She waves a hand at him.] You got what you wanted. Anything else you need for actual classes, spudnut?

[One evening, mere days before the final exams start, Toki has made the decision to meet with Sarona. It's not too last minute; he's given it some leeway. His original plan was Sunday afternoon the day before the tests. He's made an effort, though a small one, since Midterms, but he's not getting very far because things always get in the way of studying somehow. Now he's here, in the Aube 1st floor common room, and has brought a couple textbooks, previous assignments, and notes - for Alchemy and Atrifice, Defense Against Daemons and Vampires, Latin, and Artifact Research and Handling. The only one of these he's confident he actually signed up for was Alchemy.]

Hello, Sarona~!

[Sari was sitting in one of the comfy chairs by a round table. She has a stack of books by the chair for various subjects. When she sees Toki, she sits up more. She is more than willing to help him, nut Toki is...Toki.]

Hey Tik-Tok. Which subject are we starting with?

[Toki sits down next to her and leaves his stack of things on the table.]

Whatever! I don't care, what do you like best!? Do you have any general idea of what's going to be on the finals for all of these!?

[He waves a hand at his books.]

I heard sometimes finals can count up to 75% of the grade, so I'm looking to get a D in most of these, maybe a B in Alchemy at this point! I just need to scrape by in enough classes so I don't get expelled, if they even do that, or academic probation or what-have-you, I don't know how these things work! Is there any way you can like condense everything I need to know into like one page per class so I can study it maybe fifteen minutes before the exam!? Also, what's Tik-Tok mean!? I know it's like a clock sound, obviously, but what's the reference there!? Oh! Is it because I'm doing this too late!?

If you don't breathe and lower your voice a bit, I might just throw you out a window and see if you can do a levitation spell on the fly.

[That's all the warning Toki is going to get about the over exuberant way he talks. The boy needs to learn how to chill out a bit.]

Now, you're not going to get everything you should know for any class cut down to one page that you can study in fifteen minutes. You can't even get a McDonald's menu cut down to one page nowadays. Best way to do it is focus on what you have trouble remembering and use some cues and mnemonic devices to help you get that straight in your mind before the test.

As for why I call you Tik-Tok, it's because you have a time limit.

But we're on the first floor?

[At least the confusion over the levitation comment gets him to stop for a second and actually listen to Sari. And, well, breathe. Chilling out is harder, and not quite accomplished. Her advice is not encouraging.]

Okay. Well, I have trouble remembering everything, and cues and mnemonic devices aren't going to help if I forget them five minutes later, too! I mean, I'll try it, but I can't guarantee it's not just going to be gone the second I'm done studying it! That's why I wanted something concise, to just... pass. Can we get everything down to two pages per class? Just for the finals! Then I'll start more like comprehensive studying or whatever next time...

[He's been studying a great deal more than usual, for him, but over half of the time it's been useless due to inconvenient timing of visions. Which he should have explained first, perhaps.]

Time limit on the study session?

[Because if yes, he's just going to talk faster.]

First floor doesn't mean you can't practice. Those bushes aren't as comfortable as you might think with snow all over them. Believe me.

[So maybe she's taken a trip out of a window in the winter before. Quick escapes are never perfect.]

But we have only a few weeks until finals, so we only have a few weeks to get you to learn what you need to know. Not just memorizing something off a sheet of paper before the test. That's not going to help you learn anything. You'll forget it as soon as the test is over and be right back here not knowing what you were supposed to know going into your next class. I can help you with some memory exercises to work on not forgetting things, but believe me, speed memorizing is the worst thing you could do if you plan to use any of this later.

I thought finals were Monday! But if there's still a few weeks left, we're good I guess~!

[He does not plan to use anything he learns later at all, and only cares about passing the tests. But he's not going to say that.]

Um, I guess we can start with alchemy? At least I understand that mostly, I keep defaulting back to like chemistry formulas, when those don't work for magical stuff and then all the calculations are off.

Which class of yours has the first final? Some teacher do theirs early, so accept them late, so they can do field trips and projects for extra credit after. Depends on the class. [They don't share many classes so she wouldn't be surprised if some of his do start that soon. ~~And someone meant to write days but wrote weeks instead...~~]

But as for alchemy the best way to learn is through practical application. Going into the lab and practicing a bit with the materials and working them out. Once you get a feel for the ingredients, you know better what you're doing. It's like cooking.

Uhh...

[He looks through his notes, trying to find the dates for all the finals.]

Latin! That's the first one~! I'm mostly going to make guesses with that, though! It was an elective~!

[That's what he's decent at, practical application. That can't be done on the test, though.]

So, for Alchemy, how would you reproduce that for a test? Like I'm okay if all the materials are there and I can see them and touch them, but if it's just words and a theoretical situation and there's some kind of formula or matrix you're supposed to just know off-hand to answer the question; how do you not mix that up with other things because you can't see how it's working? It doesn't seem to be as concrete as chemistry, so it's confusing!

[Okay, well he's calmed down a bit, so that's good. Should make working through this easier, hopefully. Sarona lets out a bit of a sigh, running her fingers through her hair as she thinks of how to word this to make it make sense for him.]

Let's look at it a different way. Would you be able to write down how to make a bowl of cereal? Or how to make a sandwich in the exact way that you like it the most so that someone else could do it for you?

[He would not be able to do that, no.]

No. I don't always make cereal or a sandwich the same way! Sometimes I pour in the milk first and then sometimes I put the cereal in first and sometimes I use orange juice instead of milk or eat it without milk or orange juice and I don't even like cereal that much and sandwiches are even harder because there's so many different kinds and each one can be made a million different ways and variety is the spice of life after all, so why repeat the same thing when you don't even remember which condiment you used anyway or if you used chicken or ham, or chicken and ham!? There's no method to either of these things!

[And this is why he shouldn't even be taking an alchemy class because variety is what blows up buildings, but they're going to figure something out anyway. Sometimes Sarona wonders why the Academy accepts beings of pure chaos and entropy, but they probably have some role to play in saving the world.]

So do you know how to do anything in a way that you could explain to someone? What if you were asked to teach someone how to do something new? What would you try to teach them?

[What would he teach them... Making fireworks? No, it's done differently every time and that's why some of them explode right off. Math? No, because he doesn't even think about that in a linear way, it just clicks and he has no method on how to teach any of it to someone else. How to... uhh... Any time he's tried to explain anything, it doesn't seem make as much sense to the other person.]

No? I don't think this is going to work~! I'll just read through things again and hope for the best~!

[Is his brain truly nothing more than chaos or something? Randomized thoughts? Eternal memes? Sarona doesn't doubt that Toki is trying to pass his exams, but the idea of passing an exam only to not learn anything from the class is the antithesis to everything she believes in. That's basically cheating for points, in her mind.]

No, you want to pass, you need to learn. You can't just cheat your way into a good grade. How do you expect to do the classes that come next semester? Maybe we have to think outside the box more here...

[Sarona's guesses aren't too far off the mark. Toki rarely has more than a few coherent thoughts, or coherent to other people anyway. She's right; he is trying to pass his exams only because they're mandatory and grades count. He doesn't expect to retain much information, given how actually studying a decent amount of time hasn't even brought his grades up to D level in most classes.]

Why can't you cheat? Besides morality reasons, I mean. Grades are the only thing that matter in schools, right? Also, let's be clear that I don't necessarily need a good grade, just a passing one. I know things are different here than at a regular school, you know for like apocalypse reasons, but it's the same general idea that tests are what everyone looks at. I haven't thought about next semester~! That's too far ahead~! Okay! Outside the box! Uhh... I don't know. How do you focus on things that are so boring you can't stand it?

For one, don't take classes that are boring. [Did he seriously just ask that question?]

Toki, learning is about learning. You don't even need school for it, but we're hear to learn and eventually save the world, so that's what we need to do. You need to be learning something. Cheating isn't okay because you're not actually learning when you do it. It has nothing to do with morals, it's lack of practicality.

If cheating helped you learn something in a class more efficiently, I'd be all for it.

Don't you have to take some of them? I can't just drop all the boring ones, because that's most of them~!

[Not needing school to learn, he agrees with.]

It would be better to learn outside of a class~! That's a good idea~! But you know, we're not going to save the world! It's impossible! They just want us to be expendable soldiers in their army! And you bought into it!

You have to get a certain amount of credits and pass basic maths and language arts, not take alchemy.

[Please don't tell her he thinks Alchemy is a required course. The mess this boy is going to get into thinking some classes are required when they aren't.]

And things are only impossible if you don't try. There's a lot of things that were originally impossible. A lot of people think magic is impossible, but here we are.

Language arts!? That's required!? That's like fancy writing? Calligraphy? Why would that be required?

[He never even saw that class listed; and no, he has no idea which ones are requirements. Her speech on impossibility makes no sense, for one simple reason.]

If some things weren't actually impossible, there would be no word for it because the concept wouldn't even exist.

What? No! Why are you jumping to conclusions? [It's hard to work with someone who jumps around so much, but Sari isn't willing to give up.]

Language Arts is about reading, writing, and comprehension. You probably took a class like that in school when you were little. If you had enough schooling back home, you probably got a pass on it and the credits for it. It's why we don't all start out here in the first grade.

If it's something I took that long ago, why did you even mention it like it was a class here!?

[He thought he totally overlooked that one.]

You know, you're not helping like at all, so I'm just going to go!

[He gathers his books and notes. Sarona was too confusing to work with.]

( God bless Sarona...Kanata doesn't even need to see any fliers or put in a lot of effort. He's been given the greatest gift of all, and that's living in the same room as someone so beautiful, so smart, so generous...Sarona, Patron Saint of Preventing Kanata From Failing. )

Hey, hey, hey~ Sarona~? ( He leans against her desk space, hoping he's caught her before she has to jet off to tutor someone more deserving. ) Wanna know what my alchemy grade is?

( The tactic: shock her into an emergency tutoring session. )

[Sarona knows that tone as soon as she hears it, closing the book in her lap and shifting it off the side on her bed. She closes the notebook she had and tucks the pen she'd been holding into her hair, held tight by the barrette she wears.]

...Should I be offering to buy you cake in congratulations or steadying my heart?

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Get Your Nose In Those Books!

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