(And Julian is gone. He was really expecting his most stressful moment in the Scholomance thus far to involve something with more teeth.) 

When something awkward happens it's often a good strategy to pretend it didn't so that everyone else can join you in a collective delusion if they want. She mentally rewinds the last thirty seconds and says "I didn't get intro theory of artificing, which is too bad, it sounds great. I did get what looks like a start on math-for-artificers alongside algebra 2, though, and the German stuff I wanted, so not a bad pull all told." Maybe Malak will need help with her artificing theory homework and show her all the cool things she does not ill-wish her fellow students that is not proper. She can try again next semester.

Phew, that is a relief. God bless Marcy - God has already blessed Marcy a ton, but, hey, Malak is grateful, God can bless her some more if He feels like it.

"I got a pretty good assortment, only really disappointed in 'Malice and Maleficaria in 18th century French poetry' Monday mornings - more mal studies is fine, but French is my weakest language and I know nothing about European poetry."

Maybe the school noticed Malak had recently acquired a French spellbook, but she can't say that.

"Yeah, if I have a hard time with anything it'll be Akkadian Divinations. I'm hoping we'll get translations of the primary sources; if it's meant for fluent Akkadian speakers only I'm going to be in a hurry."

" - Ooh, Akkadian. My brother - had Akkadian." oops she didn't mean to pause there but she almost said 'has' and - now it's awkward and a little sad. Uh, moving on, "Do you have any other semitic languages or are you coming at it blind?"

"Pretty much blind, I'll probably be spending all my language labs on it either way." Worst case someone else in the class will be better prepared and she can buy tutoring, ideally with different tutoring. "It'll be a good springboard to Aramaic later if I decide to go that route instead of Old English via German."

"Well I'd offer to help if that wouldn't be outrageously stupid on my part, I've got a few semitic languages. Be careful not to get any Sumarian, I hear it's a bitch to learn and all the written corpus uses the Akkadian script."

"Good to know, thanks. It's funny how the scheduling can push you in new directions with languages; I don't think that happens in artificing as much because you get some choice of projects. I guess you can be mostly a metalwork person and end up in fiber classes; that's not too different."

"There's not that many specialized artificing classes, fewer than there are languages. And - I think sometimes the school is trying to be helpful, kind of, but has a lot more things it can target with lit and history? Like if instead of mediterranean secret societies it had given me a class on ninjas I would see where it was coming from even though I've got no Japanese at all. But there's no reason for it to stick a fabric artificer in a stonecutting class apart from being mean."

AAAAAH Annisa's language incompetence is going to interfere with getting in with Boston even though she doesn't have an accent in English and doesn't need any languages, AAAARGH. It takes her a while to think of anything she can say that isn't "I know none of those languages"...

"You can see bits and pieces where it would be being helpful, if the school was as safe as they'd intended it - I got thrown into some Javanese literature that'd be actively fun except for how it'll have ten kids in it and all of them, like me, probably immediately swapped out."

"Man, I bet there's a range of class size where it would be safe enough to be worth it, but because there are too many homerooms to coordinate nobody can be sure they're at that size, so they drop it, and because that always happens it's rational to drop it even though if there were perfect realtime communication between homerooms you could get a quorum. Not to say your thing was that or that you didn't do the rational thing under the circumstances."

"Yeah it seems like - I'd be much more interested in a class on ninjas or Akkadian divinations or - really anything in the vast expanse of human knowledge that's focused a little farther from the Bosphorus - if learning twenty sentences of Japanese or whatever wasn't potentially life-threatening, and being in a small class or doing badly on the homework or not having enough time to work out or make things in shop weren't all life-threatening."

Adults can research anything they want, adults can go to college thinking about being an adult is not proper either. "Exactly. And a lot of that stuff would be useful. . . Do you think death rates would be higher or lower if undone classwork didn't come at you? I mean, does anyone actually have such high time preference that they need to be threatened into learning things that keep them safe?" Oh damn, that was probably rude, what if one of them has a sibling with high time preference or something.

"With no undue offense intended towards the rest of our year - I think some people do have such high time preference. Probably not by sophomore year, though."

"I assume the kids who need to be motivated by their homework maybe eating them aren't going to make it anyway - like, the school can't force you to learn enough to make it out."

"Right. If you have such high time preference you won't study a useful spell when you might need it, you probably still won't study it if the school is threatening you. Maybe it helps the school gather mana or something."

" - Like Malia? I don't think the English wizards were ruthless enough to put their kids inside a giant metal maleficer to keep them safe."

Annisa has no idea what time preference is. Note to future Annisa, look that up? "It's not malia if we're doing it willingly. Ish."

"Yeah, if the school gets mana from us doing homework it might want us to do it even if it's not the most efficient thing to do that week. The designers must've had some kind of reason, right, it costs mana to animate the homework."

"Oh, I thought you meant - sending homework to kill the bad students and harvest them for mana. If it's just skimming a bit off the top of our homework effort - "

" - OK but right now everyone who's going for valedictorian is trying to play it safe, pick classes that aren't so hard that they're risking having to retake or get attacked by a late essay. Maybe if failing was safer, people would do harder things and that would get the school more mana?"

(Malak has also not encountered the term 'time preference' but from context has inferred it to mean 'preference for having free time')

"Personally if failing were safe I'd never leave the shop. Probably that gets the school less mana because I love shop."

"Yeah, that makes sense. I like enough things not to focus on exactly one like that but it's still unlikely that I'd do the exactly optimal thing from the school's perspective by accident if it wasn't trying to steer me at all."

Ah, to be an enclaver and have it matter at all what you like. If Annisa has to project intellectual curiosity to get in with Boston she will but she doesn't have intellectual curiosity because you get to have one priority and hers is surviving.

Malak would do harder things because - that's how you grow as a person, right, and if God/the school suggested she should learn Russian that would be reason enough for her to do it if it wouldn't endanger her. But she has no idea how to explain that in a way that'd make sense to Marcy or not be insulting to Annisa who has just said that she'd do the opposite.