"Well, who's 'they', how closely do 'they' micromanage the school, and what does the school want?"

"The designers? I'm not really sure how much to expect, when things are really inconvenient, whether the reason is - basically a sane design tradeoff or whether it's 'it was made by British people two centuries ago and they didn't have very reasonable priorities' - like curfew -"

"I think the school must be pretty autonomous. If anyone was controlling the curriculum, I have to imagine it'd be a lot more – survival-focused." 

"I guess by 'they' I meant 'the school and also Manchester and London and New York who have all modified the school at various times'."

"What I want to know is how the school acquires information – which it has to, right, since it's got classes in things that have happened since the last time it was modified. Can it just pull curricula from the void, like spellbooks? Does it learn?" 

Impressing enclavers involves so much metaphysical speculation! Annisa was not drilled on metaphysical speculation and it's starting to seem like a glaring omission!

"Pulling curricula out of the void seems like the obvious guess. Or - pulling it from somewhere, anyway. - we don't think it's writing any of this itself, do we?"

"I don't think so? It can't give you spellbooks that don't exist and I don't see why history lectures would be different."

"The spells do have to be written down but I suppose it could be stitching together Wikipedia and random graduate students' essays - maybe random Scholomance students' essays, from past years."

"You know, it should just straight-up be a senior illusion assignment, make a better history lecture. I bet kids would love it and you'd get something higher quality than -" Gesture. 

"Huh! Yeah, that's a good idea. Maybe if we talk about it enough it'll manifest as an independent study."

The projector has flickered to life and is displaying the first slide of a PowerPoint, though it's not yet talking. The first slide of the PowerPoint is 'Ancient Artifice'.

Enclaver thinks it's a good ideaaaa enclaver thinks it's a good ideaaaaa - it's possible Annisa's misremembering and New Orleans isn't even an enclave, like New Mexico isn't. "Did you hear that," she says anyway, jokingly, to the school. "Give us assignments to improve the lectures! We'll work really hard at them!"

"Maybe not specifically us?" puts in Naima, in case the school catches things addressed to it but not other things, "At least not until we've experienced a few more lectures to compare to."

"I feel like it'd be really good for morale, if some of our work went into making the school better," Annisa says. She's still worried she's doing metaphysical speculation wrong - note to future Annisa, look for a textbook on it? 

"Please don't encourage it to give us independent studies. Make it a seminar project! We'll be good!" 

"We're a group! You can give us group projects! It's in the name!" ....probably at a higher level of English fluency than hers that's not a hilarious joke it's just a dumb one.

Bella snickers a little.

"An illusion affinity would be terribly bad luck, obviously, but you'd have so much fun while you lasted. Just think about it! We could have movies." 

There is no "fashionably late" in the Scholomance, but if you're going to linger over lunch to meet the enclave seniors and then rush through the hallways alone, the first week is the time to do it.

Jean arrives, a little breathless, and surveys his classmates. No other Parisians, tragic.

"Afternoon."

"You're fine, the lecture's still figuring out how to get itself started." 

"Excellent, then I haven't missed anything."

He has a distinct French accent and a newscaster's enunciation. It's a little ridiculous, in someone as small as he is.

"May I sit here?"

Julian does not have a problem with this but, see, he has a group. What if the group objects? What if there's some kind of group negotiating tactic around seat assignments?? What if he fucks this up??

"I won't stop you."

There. That's suitably noncommittal. 

"Thanks much," and he gives the chair a suitably cautious thump with his bookbag to startle any stray inhabitants before settling himself into it.