Marshall Prepares for a Week of Administering Exams

Waking up in my lovely house, overlooking the Aegean, is a wonderful ritual every single day. I head on out to the balcony as I steep my tea, and stare out over the water. It helps relax me for the inevitable stress of having to deal with dumb and or terrible people all day. I breathe in the fresh sea air, and exhale. The egg timer back in my relatively small but seafront house’s kitchen goes off. It’s an old mechanical one. I trust the classics more than new stuff, in most cases. Heading back in, I take the bag out of the tea, placing it on a platform and sipping the tea while I head over to my calendar.

This week isn’t much work for me. As I’m a big proponent of final projects, making these kids learn how to actually be productive rather than just memorize information, this week is mostly just my final tests. Which I need to make sure are fit to test my current classes. I haven’t done that yet. Need to do that this morning, at least for today and tomorrow’s classes, before I give one of those exams to the sophomores and juniors of Observation 212. But I have time. I never schedule classes for the morning. Bad vibes all around, morning classes. Looking at my calendar, I have a meeting on Wednesday with the other American Magister based out of here. Heck, I think he may well be the only other American at all. Not positive, don’t keep track of the whole of the apprentice body, but the one Brazilian kid was given to me the moment I got here and graduated last year, so I’m assuming the people in admin would put anyone from that side of the ocean with me. Or Logan. I can ask on Wednesday, if it still feels important then.

I don’t just meet with Logan because we both are Americans, nor because we both apprenticed in the same Villa. No, he has a much better recommendation. The devil warned me to watch out for him, that he could prove to be a problem longterm. I honestly can’t think of a better way to convince me to help onboard a guy into regional politics and nonsense than her warning, especially if the problem is longterm. I don’t plan far enough in advance to care about the problems this Logan kid will cause me when he inevitably, I don’t know, assassinates some Greater Maestro to get himself a seat of power or whatever. I generally assume that’s why Therese chose to warn me, but she doesn’t lie either, so the warning was genuine.

Outside of meeting with this new kid, I note that I have ‘Drinking with the Crew’ this week, SacMag-focused Maestro’s monthly ritual of trying to sleep with the Magisters by getting us all drunk together. Important for networking, but I tend to stay fairly sober, so networking is easier. It’s also important to keep going, keep gathering dirt, so I can get him kicked out, or otherwise make the position available right as I finish my thesis and I can marvel at my own good fortune of an opening in this Villa just as I need it, and one where they are desperate for something and will therefore overpay. But that’s on Friday. Plenty of time to get prepped for that after the meeting Wednesday. Which in turn, I should make sure I’m finished with my tests for the week before being overly concerned about.

Finishing my tea, I rinse the cup and head back to my room, to change out of my robe into my teaching suit. One of them anyways. Temperature is around seventy, meaning yet again I don’t get to use my nice linen suits. Instead, I pick one of my silken suits, and carefully put it on to avoid any wrinkling. Once on, I flex my shoulders forwards and back, so the jacket is sitting just right across my back, then with a sigh, I head out of my house and into the tiny car I drive around here. Gets me from a to b, and in the narrow confines of the city whenever I head into town, being able to maneuver without any concern is quite nice. I head into the outskirts of town, to the lovely little row of shops that tempt our apprentices right across the way from one of our classroom buildings. Only one of the four classes I teach takes place in this particular building, but unfortunately since I’m one of two Magisters who teaches any Observation courses, I get the honor of being stuck in this building. Luckily, since there are four of us total, between the Magisters and Maestros, and four offices, I am one of the two Magisters who gets an office all to themselves. As I head upstairs to my office, I pass Magister Galya Tsvetkova, the other. She nods her head in a pleasant hello, then asks “Everything alright, Marshall?”

I look at her and smile. Her question seems genuine. “Fine,” I reply, “What’s up?”

“Nothing,” she says, “It’s just, your office hours just started, which makes you a good ten minutes early.” Right, office hours. Those things I definitely pay attention to and follow.

I smile. “Nope, sorry to worry you. I need to update the tests before class this afternoon, make sure they fit better with this year’s lessons. You know how it is.”

She chuckles. “No,” she jokes back, “Because some of us do that more than at the last possible minute.”

“Hey,” I shoot back with a grin, “I’m here early, which means I’m not doing it at the last possible minute. Only fairly close to it.”

Galya laughs as she heads down to the classroom. She can be a pretty fun person to chat with, though unlike me, she does schedule her classes for the morning. Avoids anything that requires being awake and functional at the crack of dawn, but nine isn’t that much better. In my book anyways, if you ask most of the apprentices they don’t seem to mind as much. Shaking my head, I head up and over to my office.

My office feels cold and empty, intentionally. For many reasons. For one, I don’t particularly want my advisees feeling super comfortable here. Magister White did it right, keep a good professional distance between advisor and advisee, to avoid giving them the false impression that you could be friends (or enemies) while still allowing yourself to be lenient and helpful whenever possible. Besides, I really don’t need them coming to me complaining about their sex lives or whatever. I’m here to help them with their magical lives and futures, they need to handle the rest of it on their own or with each other. The other key reason is scryability. Limit the number of identifiable things with clear line of sight on your desk, you limit the number of things you need to ward. Since I do my own observation wards, there are no magical scrying elements in here, and only one physical one that the devil placed kindly in a wall with a note informing me it was only for use against the students. But, the more things, the more energy it takes for me to ward them, the more tired I am, the worse I get at my job. So I’ve adapted to a very minimalist style with lots of solid cabinets to keep things inside, in the dark and without access to light or the outside world.

I turn on my desk’s computer, and open up all of my class-notes for the year, as well as the final exams for all of my classes. Starting with Obs 212, I go through and make certain each question is covered at least twice in my class notes. If I didn’t talk about it twice, I feel weird about putting it on the exam. After marking all the questions I can’t use, I find similar topics that are mentioned twice and write quick questions for them. Then, I reorder the questions randomly within each section, and for the multiple choice questions I shuffle the options slightly. Then, I save it as a new test, with this year’s date on it, and hit print. It's not a complex process, but it does take a good bit of time for each one, hence the showing up early.

I’m done with the two I needed to do today and working on my History class’s exam when there is a knock on my office door. Looking up, one of my advisees, Dorinel Dragomir, is standing there. He’s in my SacMag class tomorrow. Is that why he’s here, I wonder. Aloud, I say, “Come in, what is it?”

“I need your help,” he says, walking in and sitting down on one of the austere chairs. “Its about my internship.”

I quickly open up my advisee files on the computer’s second monitor. It’s all in my own shorthand, in case of someone untoward accessing it, but glancing at it, I see Dorinel’s section. He’s interning for our own Great Maestro Koralia Stefanidi. I wonder what has him so concerned. “What is it?” I ask, as I switch the monitor back to my class notes and continue to run through the History test.

He takes a breath. “So, Great Maestro Stefanidi has stated I will be representing her in the PMC, which is fine. But as far as all of my older friends have told me, that’s basically a month long party. How concerned should I be about propriety and maintaining appearances?”

I pause, and think about it. Dorinel is trying for the medium leagues, by my best estimation. Old family with old family expectations. “For Koralia,” I begin, choosing my words carefully, “As long as you keep up the propriety during the daytime, no one will be concerned about an Apprentice’s debauchery at night. And if you let it, those nights can be quite fun and get rather wild.” Slowly, I add, “That said, if you’re looking to do anything more than just represent her at the event, the evening activities are where the best networking can occur. So, you may at times wish to temper or at least control the debauchery when people you wish to get to know better are nearby.” Give him the information and the choice. He can be an apprentice like any other and enjoy his time to the fullest, or be what his expectations hold for him and plan for the future. Or both, after all, I did both and I turned out great.

He thinks about it, and replies, “Are the evening events like scheduled and planned, or spur of the moment. Not the wild ones, but the networking ones.” A good question. He’s trying to think of some way to do both without being in the moment. A solid start, at the very least.

“Technically, one or two scheduled post-dinner events each week, but many are not, unfortunately. And the ones that are not are where the people with connections tend to get into the state of mind where connections are easiest to form,” I keep my answer earnest while doing my best to avoid directly saying that all the Maestros there get shitfaced when they don’t need to be keeping up appearances of it being a professional convention.

He nods. “Thanks,” he says, “I assume you don’t have any recommendations?”

I shrug. “Depends on what you want out of it,” I reply.

He seems to be seriously thinking about it. He doesn’t know what he wants yet. A good sign, means he’s not just going to do what he feels like he should. “I’ve got a lot to think about,” he says as he heads out, “See you for the test tomorrow.” Good, I muse to myself, I don’t need to remind him. And I turn my focus back to the test.

My focus is on the History test fully for all of thirty seconds before Galya stops by. Checking the time, her class got out ten minutes or so ago. She grins at me. “Did I just see you, mister I-keep-my-chairs-metal-and-stiff-to-avoid-people-talking-to-me, actually letting an advisee hang out with you while you’re working?”

“Firstly, he asked for advice, and as his advisor, I gave him the information to make informed decisions, nothing more chummy than that.” Then, with a smirk slowly creeping onto my face, I add, “And also, you should know better. It’s Magister I-keep-my-chairs-stiff-and-metal-to-avoid-people-talking-to-me.”

She laughs. “My bad. You being you, I sometimes forget incongruous details like that,” she jokes right back.