"Is there something wrong with the paper?" she asks the room at large.

"I don't think anyone's checked? But it's kind of weirdly nice for, uh, school."

Oh, so no one's checked the entire front of the class, great. These do look mostly like indies, and not the well-prepared kind. She makes her way carefully forward with Annisa's lovely lovely knife held in front of her. Nothing behind the podiums, and none of them turn into mimics when she pokes them with her knife. She scoops up the paper and runs the edges of her sleeves down the edge of the stack, just to be safe - none of the wards she's woven into them to detect psychic mals light up. Paper! She hadn't been looking forward to not being able to take notes until she made a lucky supply run.

More students trickle in, including the colorfully dressed girl who Daria met at orientation yesterday. She sits at one of the two-person desks that doesn't yet have someone else sitting there, takes out a crusty leather-bound spellbook, and starts humming to herself as she reads.

"Does anyone want to trade half of this -" she gestures at the stack of paper "- for a pen?"

He only has one pen! He is not going to admit this.

"Mmm, no thanks. I'm already good on paper; I write small so what I have will last me a while."

Alyona only recognizes one person in the room - the odd painter-artificer she did the bathroom run with earlier. Not likely to have the sort of classes she's looking for.

The girl asking after pens has an accent suggesting that at least she might have some language overlap with Alyona, though. "I don't have any pens, but I have a mechanical pencil I could trade? It's a nice one, metal not plastic."

"Sure, as long as it has lead." She checks the other half of Alyona's desk, then sits down and slides the paper over.

Alyona accepts the paper, and does her own checks to make sure the paper's not some sort of extra-sneaky mal, or cursed, or something. "It's full, and I brought a bunch of extra lead, so let me know if you start running low. My name's Alyona."

"Daria." She didn't sleep well at all but maybe making small talk will be a good distraction from staring at her desk. "Slavic name or convergent evolution?"

"It's Slavic, my dad's side of the family is Russian. American legal system gets confused about gendered names, though, so my surname is masculine."

She nods and notices the schedule as she looks down. - yikes, freshman Ukrainian lit sounds like a great way to end up in a class all by herself. Otherwise it looks like a pretty good schedule, with shop on Tuesday right before lunch and nothing too awful-looking in any of the other slots. She slides her schedule over to show Alyona.

Alyona slides her schedule side-by-side with Daria's. It looks like:

Monday: Language Lab, Anglo-Saxon Poetry, Advanced Geometry, Mystical Verse from Minnesang to Goethe, Poetry & Prosody
Tuesday: Intro to Lab, Mathematics in Music, Language Lab, Modern Magical History, Freshman Composition
Wednesday: Freshman Maleficaria Studies, Anglo-Saxon Poetry, Advanced Geometry, Mystical Verse from Minnesang to Goethe, Poetry & Prosody
Thursday: Intro to Shop, Mathematics in Music, Language Lab, Modern Magical History, Freshman Composition
Friday: Freshman Maleficaria Studies, Anglo-Saxon Poetry, Advanced Geometry, Mystical Verse from Minnesang to Goethe, Poetry & Prosody

She starts comparing their course lists. Score, Daria does have a Russian lit class.

"Oh, you've got some good stuff! I'm going to request my Intro to Lab and Shop classes moved out of the morning slot and into yours. It'll bump Mathematics in Music but I'll live. And if you're planning to keep that Pushkin class, I'll swap into it from my German one; I'm way better at Russian than at German."

"I'm pretty happy with this schedule aside from the Ukrainian lit, that's going to be like four others if I'm lucky and of course they're all thinking the same thing. I think I can swap it for your comp class, and then I'll have Russian Literature Before Pushkin for my lit requirement. It'll bump my comp, but I've got shop and lab down so it can't do anything too terrible with that slot."

"Oof, yeah. Good luck!" Alyona finishes writing down her requested swaps and goes to turn in her revised schedule.

Looking at Daria and not at her desk, she asks "So what track are you? I'm guessing artificing?"

Daria's going to hold on to her schedule until more of the class gets theirs, in case someone wants a look at hers or gets something really good. It's only polite not to stare at Alyona's desk, though. "Yeah. I've got a ward affinity, but it works best with the anchored kind."

Daria doing that is probably wise but Alyona's stuck using two of her swaps on shop and lab, so this is probably as good as she's gonna get. And this way if it gives her some weird class in her finalized schedule she at least has a chance to convince someone else to swap in.

"That'll be in demand on the outside, at least," she says diplomatically. "Any particular kind of anchor, or will any do?"

What is 'on the outside' supposed to mean? It sounds like an insult, but she doesn't think she's done anything worth being insulted about? - better say something instead of sitting here, uh, "I've been working mostly with thread, it's light and in a pinch you can unravel your old work and make something new." 

"I just meant, like, enclaves would probably be real excited about having anchored wards, even if you aren't able to get the materials you need for them in here. If it works with thread though it sounds like you've got it pretty good, I know I'd trade the bottom inch of my shirt for stronger warding around my door and drain and stuff."

Riley wasn't planning on doing much talking today- he slept poorly, which hopefully will get better when takes his potions tonight- but he has to ask:

"What did everybody get for their first block Monday?"

There's no way he's surviving a Monday morning shop slot. Let some brave, stupid independent jump on that grenade; Riley needs to prepare for his younger brother next year. He has to request something, anything else.

Alyona looks over.

"Sorry, I'm no help, I've Language Lab then." If he were language track, he'd almost certainly already have it, so presumably he's something else, which means he's not eligible, so this information basically worthless to him.

"I've got Advanced Geometry. What're you trying to get rid of?"

"Monday morning shop slot. Thank you. Any blocks you need options for?"

Riley banishes the Monday morning Intro to Shop; thanks but no thanks, Scholomance. He's willing to rise to the occasion- for most occasions. Not this one.

She slides her schedule over. "I'm okay with this one, but if you've got something easy Tuesday and Thursday right after lunch it would be nice to bump Formal Logic for Spellcraft, that sounds incredibly fun but I'm going artificing and my courseload is bad enough as it is. Advanced Geometry's great for artificing but pretty hard, I've heard."

"Better than dying of mals, I figure. Thanks for the warning, though, I'll keep it in mind. I have...Gaelic Literature Through the Middle Ages," he says, passing her the schedule. "As long as they don't throw too much Gaelic at us first thing, I can keep up in Language Lab if I need to. Wouldn't mind bumping my after lunch class on the other days, either- History of Maleficing isn't going to help me with alchemy."