Looking ahead to our first YPL event

[alt_sinistra]

First YPL event
As you all know, our first YPL event of the year will be on October 22nd, and we will welcome both our foreign guests with an orienteering scavenger hunt of the Hogwarts buildings and grounds that will test your navigation skills, charms, puzzle solving abilities, and more. There will be small prizes for the winning team on each path (there are four), and small tokens for everyone who makes a sincere attempt to complete the course.

I want to first thank Mr Ronald Weasley and Miss Katrina Bundy for a proposal that has been most helpful in planning this event - well done, and good initiative!

Everyone else is welcome to sign up to participate, and should expect to form groups of 3-5 students, including our foreign guests in your groups. You might want to think now about how to arrange that.

For those who participate, all the puzzles and challenges of the course can be solved with magic no more complicated than our students learn at the end of 3rd year. However, in many cases, multiple solutions are possible, and any method that does not damage other students, property, or beings is permitted. CCF and YPL counsellors will be available if you have any concerns.

CCF members and YPL counsellors
You will be needed to help staff the various positions, and of course set up elements of the hunt in advance.

Please sign up on my office door for a prep shift (either Friday night, the 21st, or Saturday, the 22nd), and plan to be available from 2pm to 5pm for the actual event. (A special tea will follow for participants). I may also be adding one more addition to your Saturday morning (a pleasant one, if the scheduling works out) so plan your study time accordingly.

Other notes
Tuesday evening class: I will be in New London for last minute planning with the YPL committee on Tuesday afternoon, and it is likely the meeting will stretch into the evening. Therefore, I am cancelling Tuesday observing classes, but have asked a couple of my NEWT students to be available from full dark until curfew if you need to get caught up on any assignments.

I will also not be available for questions during that time, obviously, so if you have questions for assignments due Wednesday, ask them by Monday.

Poppy: I'd love a chance to consult with you about a few specific considerations. Are you free tomorrow afternoon, or perhaps Monday afternoon? If not, can we chat in private message here?

Comments

Private message to Poppy

[alt_sinistra]

I do have a couple of small things about the orienteering to ask you about, but really, they're trivial - there's brooms and some scrambling in the rocks down the cliff, but nothing that's a particularly dangerous risk beyond that. (And we've got some precautions in both cases.)

What I really want to ask you about is the new representative for the YPL committee from St. Mungo's. Healer Deverill, you may remember, I quite liked, and I'm not sure why he's been replaced. (Of course, I get very little say in that sort of thing.)

The new one is apparently a Healer Stint - I don't have his first name yet. Do you know anything of him?

Re: Private message to Poppy

[alt_poppy]

Ah. I missed this before.

Possibly it was a reflexive avoidance, since you've mentioned one of my least favourite people.

Facinorous Stint.

Awf

I should say straight off that I'm biased. I fear he's one of those who'd like to see me sacked, and the dislike is mutual.

Deverill was replaced, though? It wasn't simply that his term ended?

If that's the case, I've a suspicion Stint has politicked to get himself appointed to your committee. Who makes those appointments?

Re: Private message to Poppy

[alt_sinistra]

Facinorous? Who on earth names a child that?

That said, I'm glad to go in forwarned: I had a suspicion some sort of politics was involved, and it's so much easier to deal with it when I know it's coming. (We had one of those last year: did I ever tell you about that?)

In terms of the committee - other than me (and I had to go through that massive vetting process with all sorts of people), and other than the clerk from the Wizarding Examinations Authority who assists with the paperwork, basically, the departments appoint whoever they see fit.

When we started, it was, I think, not seen as a particularly interesting or prestigious post (and it can be quite a lot of work, though Ministry members get a stipend for time outside their normal work hours, and so forth).

But I've been wondering - after last year, and particularly now - if it isn't starting to attract the interest of those who are seeking status, rather than those who at least somewhat want to be of service. I had a couple of other owl inquiries over the summer about how to become a member, though they thankfully disappeared when I mentioned that it was done by department.

We've a core group, you know, and then usually one or two consulting people year to year - it was the theatre group last year, the artist this year, and we've also got someone from International Magical Cooperation, I believe.

Re: Private message to Poppy

[alt_poppy]

Healer Stint's parents have a good deal more to answer for than merely his naming.

It is certainly true that Stint has a good deal of pull within St Mungo's. I doubt you'd know many of the personalities involved, so I shan't bother you with the details unless you believe it would help you to know.

And I don't believe you did tell me about politicking behind your committee last year. Do share!

Re: Private message to Poppy

[alt_sinistra]

I'm torn between asking you now, so I'm prepared, and waiting, so I can give my own unvarnished opinions after the meeting, and compare notes. But I am forewarned to be careful, which is a great plus.

(And warn my clerk, which has come in handy, as you'll see. Do you remember Felix Green? Younger Hufflepuff, was a firstie in my last year, and a seventh year the first year I taught? Halfblood, so as thorough as he is, he doesn't have much hope for advancement, but I couldn't make everything work without him.)

Last year's challenge - and probably this year's, too - is a rather persistent fellow named Edgar Gimlet. He took over Magical Transportation from the previous woman (who I'd liked), and I think for similar political reasons. He's asked me out after meetings several times, but there's something about him that's entirely distasteful. Perhaps the fact he's so clearly disinterested in me, and very interested in who I know, and could introduce him to.

Felix has been quite creative in inventing interruptions, for which I'm very grateful, but it's made meetings more tedious than I would like.

Gimlet's also one of those people who thinks he knows everything about everyone else's job, and is often dead wrong - but convincing him of that takes an age. Which of course, doesn't endear him to me either.

Re: Private message to Poppy

[alt_poppy]

Oh, dear. Those are such terribly awkward situations when they arise. You are fortunate that young Mr Green is adept at his job and sensible about yours.

I do remember him, though I didn't know him especially well.

Re: Private message to Poppy

[alt_sinistra]

Young Mr Green is quite excellent at his job, and I make a point of writing a letter for his file after every meeting saying so.

But yes. Quite awkward. Fortunately, it's not all dire - I quite like a couple of the women on the committee, and between us, we can more or less force things the directions we want to go. Or we could last year, and I hope that's still true.

You might actually have advice on that one, actually. One of the problems I'm clearly hitting (and my age certainly doesn't help) is that I think they assume that I'll do what they want.

Obviously, I don't, and I back it up with documentation and our charter and all of that. (And the fact Auror Lestrange was the one who nominated me for the position and supported my appointment has been useful a few more times than I like to think about.)

But if you had any other tips for convincing men who think they know everything that you are not in fact a doormat, I would love to hear them.

(Someone did send me a copy of that The Rules of Play: The Succesful Witch in Boardroom and Bed, but it's really only good for making me howl with laughter after I get home from the meetings.)

Re: Private message to Poppy

[alt_poppy]

The Rules of Play. Really?

Sorry to have disappeared from the conversation so abruptly. Something disagreed with rather a number of tummies tonight. I trust it came from the kitchens and is not something we'll all be passing around for several weeks.

Also. Did you realise there's a game they're playing this year with Bertie Botts beans? I think it's the sort of thing older adolescents play with intoxicants, something to do with having to repeat tongue twisting rhymes without error, where the penalty for failure is eating great handfuls of the things. I've just had a third case of a child presenting with simply horrifying ulcers in her mouth from indulging in this way.

I'm not sure I've any very good advice to offer for ways of managing men in professional situations, except to be confident (project it whether it's truly felt or not), to remain unflappable, and to be absolutely in top form at every moment. Without, of course, ever appearing to upstage any of them.

It's a bit like tightrope walking in a high wind, I imagine.

I do value the fact that in my daily work I don't have to spend much time in the company of such creatures.

Re: Private message to Poppy

[alt_sinistra]

Distressing book, isn't it? (Though, as I said, deeply funny afterwards.)

No worries - I always assume something else might require your attention (which is why I ask you things well in advance.)

And I am somehow failing to be surprised that students have found yet new and exciting ways to use ordinary items to cause difficulties. Though I admit, that's a new one on me.

On the rest - well, that is one of the reasons I love working here. The astronomy research I did before I started teaching had some of the same problems (fewer women go into astronomy as seriously, for reasons I've never understood.)

I did have an interesting chat with Raz, who reminded me that Healer Stint was one of the ones overseeing his care last summer. So, at least I won't be pressed for an introduction to Raz, which is a small virtue.

Re: Private message to Poppy

[alt_poppy]

It's quite true that Stint came in to consult when Rabastan was injured. One cannot say that he does not know his craft. He's earned quite a strong reputation, treating curse damage. In fact, I've heard that the Ouroboros Club have a special arrangement whereby it's Stint they call first whenever there's an injury on their sparring courses. He can boast that he's treated many of the most highly placed people in the Protectorate.

And he does.

Re: Private message to Poppy

[alt_sinistra]

Hmm. That does give me quite an idea of his personality, at least. And his competence.

Ah, well, I suppose it's better this year than last: this summer made me a little less nervous around that level of social status, too. (Not that I'm not still nervous, mind you: just a little less terrified of immediately putting a foot wrong.)

Re: Private message to Poppy

[alt_poppy]

Though I realise it does little good to say, I will say it nonetheless: you are going to handle this meeting successfully. You'll manage all the personalities with a firm hand and a pleasant demeanor. You have the gifts for this; I've seen them.

Truly.

Re: Private message to Poppy

[alt_sinistra]

Thank you: that does help.

And you know me, I do fret beforehand, and then it's fine. Though I wonder if the fretting (and the preparing) are part of why.

I should have a few more society and gossip magazines by Monday that I'm done with, if you could use more reading material for your patients, too. Me, I would like to get back to my other reading, but knowing the gossip has turned out to be useful in these meetings so often it'd be foolish to stop.

Re: Private message to Poppy

[alt_poppy]

I can scarcely imagine you reading those things, but I'm sure you're quite right about the usefulness of the strategy.

And they will be appreciated here when you are done with them. The copies here at present are looking a bit sad.

Re: Private message to Poppy

[alt_sinistra]

Really, they are. They've saved me putting my foot in my mouth dozens of times already. Or running out of interesting social conversation.

I've got a lovely new history book, and there's that fiction one, Charmless that looks like a romp.