An MT215 Study Session

“Shit, I just noticed the time,” Magister Musaev says, as he hastily rushes back to his desk. “Next week, we will be moving into the practical basis of imbuement, so read chapters three and four in your textbook, and bring in your copy of the practice exemplum on page thirty-one.” The clock ticks over to the hour as he’s talking, but we generally wait for him to finish his ramble before we start gathering up our things. I look over at the others in the class, mostly bored juniors and tired seniors. They wait less out of respect and more because that is slightly more time where they don’t have to worry about anything else, academically speaking at least.

I start to shuffle my things into my bag, the notebook and textbook slide smoothly in, but the pocket I usually shove all the pens and highlighters doesn’t want to open. As I mutter curse words at the bag and jerk it around to open up the pocket with one hand, another of my classmates, Lukas, checks in. “Everything alright?” he asks, standing over me.

I look up at the thin, svelte junior, and shrug. “Same as always,” I half-joke, as I finally get the pocket to unsnap. I put the pens and highlighters in.

“Um, I was hoping you might spot me your notes at some point? I kind of zoned out for the last fifteen minutes there.”

I smile, shaking my head. “Sure, I guess, but you don’t really need them. He basically just went over the third section of chapter two again, so as long as you have your notes on that, you should be fine. He probably was just trying to emphasize it, because we’re moving into practice and he doesn’t want us to accidentally overexert and die because of it.”

Lukas nods. “Alright. I might still want to run through it with you and some others, compare your and Kylee’s notes on the subject with our memories, sometime before attempting the example.”

I stand up, swinging my bag back over my shoulder. “Sure thing, just loop me in when you guys are setting that up,” I say, waiting for him to nod before I leave.

He smiles and says, “Sure thing, Quinton,” then turns and heads out to his waiting friends. I walk to the door at a more relaxed pace. I’m done for the day after all, Imbuement of Power was my only Thursday class.

As I walk out of the classroom, I notice a few messages on my phone. It’s the Drunkards and Dumbassery groupchat. Some forty missed messages. I can read those later. A text from Jules, reading, ‘Sean doesn’t understand own notes quiz tomorrow help.’ A text from Sean as well, reading simply, ‘elaine has murder in eyes, read the fucking thread’.

With a sigh, I open up our study group’s chat. They organized a meeting for this evening, for cramming before our first test of MT215 tomorrow, but evidently they’re moving it up because Sean has a date or something. It’s starting in half an hour. He’s being intentionally vague, which means he wants the ladies to think it’s a date, but it probably is something more boring. Or much more interesting. I’ll ask him tonight, after the whatever-it-is. I send forth a quick, ‘just got out of IP, might be a little late.’ as I head out of the building and start the nice neighborhood jog to my dorm building.

Nodding with a smile at the neighbor who is constantly complaining about the Villa’s presence to the county board, I head into the building and up to my room. Sean’s already with Jules, so our room is empty as I switch out my IP textbook and notes for my MT textbook and notes. I check on my ant farm, but the readout has no change. I hope that the imbuement practices can help hasten the process to determine the details of how the process works, but that’s not definitive, just another hope in a laundry list of hopes I still hold. With the switch complete, I put my bag back on my back, and head out of our room, locking the door behind me. Walking down stairs, and back outside, I start to make my way back towards the library.

As I arrive, I can see half the groupchat is already there. Sean and Ben are arguing about something, as they’re wont to do. Elaine is glaring daggers at Sean, though I suspect that’s Sean’s fault. And Jules is sitting, staring at some bit of paper and looking stressed. I head to the studyroom, and as soon as I open the door, the noise of the argument floods out. “That doesn’t make any goddamned sense,” Ben finishes his statement.

I close the door behind me, and ask Elaine, “Where’s your worse half?”

Elaine’s glare breaks and she chuckles at that. “Hey Q. Katie’s class ended at the same time as yours, but hers was going into the park, so current guesses are she’ll be ten minutes late.”

Jules looks up. “What took you so long?”

I smirk. “I’m not about to try to read Sean’s notes, I know his handwriting.”

Sean looks jokingly offended. “Hey, that’s rude. My handwriting is perfectly legible. Most of the time. Probably.”

I shake my head as I swing my bag off my shoulder and open it, removing my notebook. “Any idea what’s up with Paula?” I ask Jules.

She shrugs. “Haven’t talked to her yet today. She said she’d be here in the chat.”

I nod, and look at the time. About time to get started, I muse with a sigh. “Alright, Sean, I assume you’ve at least got what sections from the chapter you’re thinking it’ll be on?”

“Yeah,” Sean replies, “Give me a second.” He moves back to the table and starts shuffling through his detailed, illegible, and disorganized notes. Grabbing a seemingly random sheet of paper, he adds, “So, based on my friends who took her 215 last year, Magister Sobol tends to focus on the basics of each chapter, the theoretical and practical underpinnings, with the essay questions to address the more complex parts of the chapters and the external readings. That means,” at this point he turns back to Ben, “Just understanding the basics perfectly, we would get a B. Maybe even better, because we could build back to those complex parts from the underpinnings and get at least partial credit.”

Ben shakes his head. “The basic parts are just that, basic. We don’t need to focus too much time studying them, because, by their very nature, there isn’t as much to study. The complicated parts are what we need to remember.”

I sit down next to Jules. “So how long has this one been going on?” I ask.

Jules shakes her head. “Only about five minutes. Before that they were arguing about whether or not Sean needed to explain where he was going.”

“That explains Elaine’s glares,” I say. Jules nods. Sean being vague about it would make everyone but me think that Sean’s going on a date, which, especially with Katie not being here, would remind Elaine of the days before the study group was around.

I sigh, and start to open up my notes to the basics. “Get them to stop, please,” I ask Jules. She nods, a resigned look on her face. She and Katie are the two that Elaine, Paula, and I rely on to keep Ben and Sean from eating each other’s faces off. She’s mostly upset because she doesn’t like being on Sean’s side in one of their arguments. She stands up. “Look Ben, you’re not wrong for you, probably Katie, maybe Elaine, I’m not going to speak for her.” From her seat, Elaine shrugs. She needs the basics refresher, but not as badly as some of us do. “But the rest of us really do need to go over those building blocks a few times, to really grasp them before we can even try to understand those more complicated matters.”

Ben’s face twists a bit, like a mix of smug pride and disappointed acceptance. After all, he was wrong in the argument, but she said he was only wrong because he’s smarter than them. He turns to me. “Alright Quinton,” he says, “Are your notes ready?”

“Yeah,” I say, spinning my notebook around for the others to see. “So I highlighted the basic postulates in green, the red are things I think were just your advisor wandering off on a tangent, the orange are things related directly to the more complicated theories in the textbook that she also talked about in class. Based on Sean’s research, the two essay questions will be based on one of those five orange sections. The red numbers are to the line of the notes their related postulates start on. Any questions?”

“Yeah, why can’t your notes be that organized?” Jules asks Sean.

Sean laughs. “They are, just not for other people to understand,” he counters, “Everything is perfectly logically laid out. To me at least.”

Katie walks in with Paula. “Sorry we’re late,” she says, “Are we still in the arguing phase, or have we moved on to actual studying?”

Elaine smiles up at her girlfriend, offering her a seat. “Technically neither,” she jokes, “we’re about to start.”

Jules shoots Paula an inquisitive look. Paula shakes her head and shrugs. “Darren had meetings with us this week. Mine was today and even though it went long, before someone so conveniently had a quote unquote thing come up, it still wouldn’t have interfered with the timing of our study session.”

“Things are important,” Sean insists. “So, we can focus on the basics that are referenced in your orange bits, right? If they’re the ones we have deeply ingrained, we have more of a chance of being able to bullshit the essays.” he shuffles through his papers to his one of them, and, grabbing one of my highlighters, begins to highlight his own sections.

Paula looks at my notes. “What’s the purple highlighted bits?” she asks.

It’s the bits I believe are important for what I’m really trying to understand. Not at all relevant to this test, or even really this class. “Personal notes stuff, not really relevant to our class,” I say. Ben’s brow furrows a bit, but everyone else nods in understanding.

And we start the actual process of studying. Which, for us at least, mostly involves Sean and I reading and rephrasing our notes, Ben and Katie debating about which way to think about it is better and why, a conversation that only Paula and Elaine generally understand, and they sort of dumb it down for Sean, Jules, and I, which Jules then writes down on her blank sheet of paper. We go through all of the postulates, and even a couple of the orange sections, before it starts running up against dinner time.

Jules looks up. “Alright, well, this has been good, but some of us need to eat, and others of us have vague and mysterious things they ought to get to, so I’ll get this photocopied and make sure everyone has our guide,” she says, in the middle of a debate over the morality of negative-cost magics.

“Okay, fine,” Katie says. “But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

Ben laughs. “Of course it doesn’t,” he replies, “You being wrong means you’re wrong, Jules is just preventing me from proving it.”

Elaine shakes her head. “Ben, why don’t you stay, collect our copies from Jules,” she says, trying to end the coming argument before it starts.

“Fine, I guess,” Ben says, collapsing back into a seat. “Have fun.”

Sean looks around and adds, “Well, good chat, but some of us have places to be. Q can get me the cheatsheet tonight, after I return triumphant or otherwise.” He smirks, which only serves to upset Elaine and disappoint Katie. I shake my head at the idiot, and he leaves, knowing I’m shaking my head not in refusal of his request, but in sheer and utter disappointment in him as a person.

I get up to leave myself, but before putting my things away, I ask Jules, “Need anything else from the notes?” Elaine and Katie head out, hand in hand, as I ask.

She shakes her head. “Should be good. See you at dinner?”

“Probably. I don’t have plans,” I joke.

As I follow the couple out, Paula catches up with me. “So, what exactly are the purple notes you didn’t want to talk about?” she asks.

I smile wide. “Sorry, that’s a secret. You should know it takes much more than asking nicely to get me to share one of those.”

“Oh I do,” she counters, also grinning as we begin the walk to the cafeteria, “The real question is, is it an interesting enough secret to put in the effort of getting you to spill?”

I shrug. “Given it’s about me, probably not,” I joke.