"I will make a list of things we can do if we want extra credit. I've heard it's sometimes worth doing well enough in history classes to skip the final, both because it's a dangerous time of the year and because it's extra study time finals week for finals in other classes."

"Oh, I didn't know that. Do you know if you can get extra on top of that for actually taking the final?" 

" - I mean, what would you want it for?"

"Um." 

...

OH THANK GOD

" - I was really worried I was an idiot who was going to fail all my classes but if you think you have a shot at valedictorian maybe I'm not that bad."

wait did she just say that out loud?

It's better than the thing Annisa was tempted to say which was 'well with your affinity that's probably the way to go', there's nothing else people'd want him on a graduation team for.

"Well, you're good at everything so far, so I guess it makes sense to try."

She's not looking at any of these people. She's trying to sketch the Hittite approach towards the Egyptian forces, in case this reveals anything interesting.

Oh thank god they don't think he's insane. "Well, I don't want to rule it out freshman year. I mean – with my affinity, it's really the best way to go."

And, because it's important to them that they understand that he's not just full of it, he can be a real asset to the Group – "I got a perfect score on the entrance exams. That's – it's rare, and it suggests I'm well positioned relative to the Sino kids, and the Anglo kids are barely selected at all – and I don't actually need to make it, right." Because he'll have his choice of enclaves anyway, if he lives. "I just need to hit top ten, to get an alliance, and mainly I don't want to undershoot. And if I can't make top ten – " 

If Julian can't make top ten, he never had a real chance to begin with. But he doesn't need to say that. 

Malak has no idea if he's insane or not, she'll have a better sense after she knows if she fails all her first-term classes.

"In-" wait that would be rude to Annisa - "God willing."

When they have mapped out the battle and generated a reasonably long list of things that might be artifice in it, Annisa stops them. "All right, I think we should pause here, because we have another appointment for a study group for this class.  And at dinner, Bella will be incredibly impressed with how well we understand the text and how rapidly we generate ideas, and less impressed if we just wrote out our answers already. So, leave off here?"

"Seems like a good place to stop."

"And I at least should do French next, though I probably don't need all three of you helping."

"Like I said, I should brush up anyways before I have to start exploring centuries-old French poetry."

"I actually do want to see whether I can make head or tail of this library. - although probably when I'm annoyed with my homework and need a break, I'm gonna see how much history of alchemy work I can plow through first."

Malak is being generous, really. Future Annisa: figure that out. "Okay." Deep breath. "The assignment is just translating these thirty simple sentences, and they build on each other, so it shouldn't be hard, except for the verb rules, which were on the worksheet in class."

Malak will try to help her with verb conjugations.

It takes an awful lot of self-discipline but Annisa can keep herself focused on the worksheet without self-harming. She is fully aware it'll all fly out of her head the second it's finished, but one thing at a time.

Julian is going to try and plow through his math homework so he can spend most of the weekend retranslating all his German reading for extra credit. And speaking of this weekend – 

"Does anyone want to go down to the gym on Saturday? I don't know about the rest of you, but before I got to the Scholomance I hadn't left my apartment in two years and I'm not exactly in peak running-from-mals condition." 

"I was taught to come in in poor condition on purpose, there's more mana to be had in training up. And you can dehydrate yourself farther."

"Same." and let that be all that is said on the topic of dehydration.

"Which is to say, yeah, I'll come work out on Saturday. I owe Daria a lot of mana for the wards on my room."

Malak owes her future self a lot of mana due to Crimes, but she can't just say that.

"Yeah, I'd love to. I can handle strength training alone, but I was honestly kind of worried about how to practice running enough without causing myself any problems. ...I wonder if we could trade off one person reading homework out loud and the other three exercising, or something, make double use of the time."

"Does everybody already know how to do horrible wall sitting instead of normal sitting while you do your homework, it's painful enough I can do languages."

"...that doesn't really sound beneficial? To me, I mean, I acknowledge that it must be doing something for you. - oh wait, is it like an exercise thing that makes you stronger and not just something that causes pain for no reason."