85: To Derp, or Not to Derp
“Well, well! You’re dressed fancy today. Or are you?”
Indeed, as Derpy said, Karyn had put on her interview suit and had a folder stuffed with papers at her side. “It’s for real today. I probably don’t need to be, but I put it on out of force of habit.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have to do this again, and before this year it had to be done in person. They finally put it online, but I still feel like it’s a key day.”
Derpy was confused, but bore an expression of patience. Surely Karyn would explain. “Go on,” she said.
“A few weeks before the end of each semester, I have to register for the classes I’m going to take next time. Each discipline has certain classes it has to take, but they’re not all given at the same time, and if you’re not careful, then you might not be able to graduate in four years. Instead, you’ll have one or two more classes that you’ll have to take, but they won’t pay your board for that time, and it’s a lot worse financially. So getting the right ones at the right time is important.”
“And you had to get dressed up for that?”
“Emphasis on had,” Karyn said, actually emphasizing the word. “Because the only fair way to do it was to have every class set up a table with a sign-up sheet, and whoever wanted the class had to race to the front. But now with computers, the race is just for your packets to get there ahead of everyone else’s.
For Derpy, who had a working knowledge of networks, the vision of the particles pulsing through the wires to get to the server before any others was amusing.
“So there’s a time set when everyone goes for it?”
“Yeah, Sunday at noon. I guess they figure that’s the time everyone’s most likely to be not working, or finished with church if that’s something they do, or woken up from a Saturday night of drinking and carousing. Anyway, here’s their catalogue.”
In one respect, the college had not taken everything into cyberspace, as Karyn was able to show Derpy a professionally-bound catalogue with “Spring Term” emblazoned on the cover, complete with a picture of flowers in bloom. Inside, once she flipped past all the introductory fluff that served to pad out the document and the instructions for using the service that virtually everyone knew anyway, she was able to see four or five squares of text per page. Each one had a bold title and code number, and below that in italics a time, location, and the name of a professor. Many of the latter entries were “TBA.”
“All right. Let’s go over which ones you need to make sure that you’re not going to miss your graduation.”
“I’ve done that,” said Karyn. “I sit down with my advisor every semester, but the meetings are a lot quicker now. I’ve taken most of the courses I need that are tricky to get, and now they’re basically running a long sequence for the people in my discipline. They’re higher-level courses that are almost guaranteed not to fill up.”
“What is your discipline, by the way?”
“Support.”
Derpy looked at her a little skeptically.
“I know, most people wonder why I’m not doing programming, or networks, or systems. The fancy stuff like that. And all that’s important, and I’ll see my share of all of it in my work. But I know too many IT geeks whose attitude is that the system is best when there are no users. And that’s just naïve. Alienating the users is the quickest way to make IT obsolete. Just like assembly-line manufacturing is a bad industry to be in, because they’re replacing everything with robots, I worry about when companies decide that they don’t need support because it’s easier to make products that almost never fail. Well, I think that’s bad for everyone, and I’m going to buck the trend.”
Derpy clasped her wings to Karyn’s face. “I’ve never heard you talk so passionately about your work. I really like hearing that from you. Now, come on, let’s get the classes you need so you can get started.
“Oh, but even if you are passionate, you shouldn’t swear.”
Karyn replayed her half of the conversation in her mind, and just muttered an apology rather than try to explain how she was using the word buck. “Anyway, the point is that, whatever subject you’re majoring in, there’s some flexibility built into your lineup to make this easier. I have some electives that I need to start using. Four classes I need where I can take anything in the book. I’ll take one this semester, one the next, and then two in my final year. If all goes right, that last semester will be an easy ride. I’ll only take four classes, two of them will be these electives, one of them will be a barely-graded lab, and one I’ll have with my advisor himself. He knows me, and he knows that I’m a good student, so I’ll be favorably graded.”
“Oh, are the electives easier than the core courses? I thought it would be the other way around. Since you don’t know anything about, say—“ Derpy slapped one page with her hoof, kicking some dust into the air—“Urban Social Photography, it would be harder for you.”
“You’d think so, but here’s the thing. If the professor knows that someone is taking that class to be a social media expert or an artist, then that student will get the most attention. When someone’s taking it as an elective, the grading is again lenient.”
“So how do you decide what course to elect?”
“By what I’m interested in. Let me see the catalogue.” Derpy passed it over. “Sadly my school isn’t one of those that’s offering really wacky courses, like playing video games for grades or examining the philosophy of Harry Potter or some such.”
Derpy flew behind Karyn and read over her shoulder.
“Not that that would be an easy class for me,” Karyn continued. “I’d be too distracted laughing at how foolish their impression of magic is.”
“Yeah. How about human history or something like that?”
“History? Ugh, boring. I left all that behind when I finished my one requirement. Actually, I think you passed that test for me.”
Still Derpy was distracted, and muttering. At last she stopped poring over the book and said, “I think you have a great opportunity here to really get yourself a well-rounded education. This would be like if Dinky, going to the Gifted Unicorn school, got to spend a few hours each week flying with me. Or some pegasus who knew flying better. The point is, you should be looking for a class that will challenge you and make you a better person after you pass it.”
“And I want that, I just want an easy A as well.”
“Why?”
Karyn had to think a moment. “Well, I know a lot of people say that your GPA doesn’t matter to employers, and even if it does, the few points I’ll lose from getting a B+ instead of an A won’t make a big difference in the grand scheme of things, but at the same time I just want some free success.”
“I don’t know that I agree with that, but before we go crazy, let’s see if there’s a class you can take that will satisfy us both.”
They flipped past each page of the catalogue’s elective section, but could find nothing that satisfied them both. Most of the time, each of them found a reason to reject it.
“I’m picking up the flavor,” said Derpy, “of the ones that are the softballs. They have descriptions that are written more like advertising pitches, while the ones that are in the disciplines are more academic.”
“How can you tell that?”
“They’re the ones I don’t understand. Be sure to pick one of those.”
Karyn had a laugh at that, then went back to looking. “Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been looking at the courses that have no prerequisites, because if they do, I won’t have them unless they’re already in my core courses. But what if I took one that had pre-reqs, but where it’s something that I know even if I didn’t take the class?”
Derpy parsed that while checking the time to make sure that they didn’t miss noon. “How would you know it?”
“Like take the English courses. To take the 200-levels, all you have to do is pass 101 and 102. I never took 102, but it’s just essay writing and I do that in all my other classes.”
“But will you be able to sign up if you haven’t taken the course?”
Karyn looked at her computer. “It depends on how they designed the system. If those requirements are hard-coded in, to where I get a rejection, I won’t be able to.
“But if that’s the case, it’s bad coding on the part of whoever designed it. They should make it a warning, but not a lock. Because anyone who does want to sign up for a course and should would then be messed up because of the system. That’s the exact kind of thing I would want to explain to people when I go to work.”
“How about this?” Derpy had looked to the section Karyn had mentioned. “English 211: The Great Works.”
“Why that one?”
“I was just thinking of all the times that everypony has read some popular book and they make references to it that I don’t get. If you knew all the great works, you wouldn’t have to go through that.”
Karyn put her hand on Derpy’s shoulder and rubbed her fur. “I feel sorry for you when you say things like that. Why didn’t you go read the books everypony else was reading?”
“Truth is, I don’t enjoy it that much. Rainbow Dash was always trying to get me to read those famous books like Daring Do, but I just never enjoyed them.”
“Wait, Daring Do is your idea of a Great Work?”
Derpy’s eyes separated more than normal. “Well, yeah. Like I said, everypony reads them. Except me, I think. Is it different here?”
“Yeah it kind-of is. Like for this class, the books they’ll be talking about won’t be the popular ones. We have adventure books like Daring Do, only with fewer pegasi, but those aren’t the kind of books that get discussed in this class.”
Karyn expected Derpy to ask what kind of books were, but instead she said, “I wonder why you don’t. I mean, isn’t that the point of learning? To be friendly and helpful?”
“That’s the difference between Equestria and here. There’s so much tragedy here that we need to write about it and make our kids read it so that they know how to deal with it. It’s the opposite side of the same coin. You guys show what happens if you’re good friends, and we show what happens when you’re not.”
“Oh! Like the Hearth’s Warming Eve story.”
“Exactly!” Karyn slapped her hand with her fist. “When somepony wrote that, though, they gave the happy ending, and they just told what happened. If a human wrote it, there would have been more of a lesson. In any case, I’m going to sign up for that class.”
“Oh, good. At least we came to a decision.”
Karyn got on the computer and checked the time on the official web site. Once her computer had been synced, she counted down the seconds until noon, then refreshed the web page. Given her skill with the mouse and keyboard, she was able to open multiple browser tabs and sign up for all of the classes at once. When she got to the tab with the English class, she said, “See, already three people have signed up.”
“How many before it fills up?”
“Could be hundreds. I’ll be OK if this goes through…there, it never even asked me about the prerequisite. That’s not exactly ideal, but I’ll take it.”
“Great!” said Derpy.
“Hey, I just realized, this schedule is really compact.”
“What do you mean?”
Karyn reached for her calendar. “Three of the classes are split between Monday and Wednesday, an hour and a half each. One is three hours on Tuesday night and this English class is early Tuesday and Thursday. That means I’ll be done with classes by Thursday at ten, and have extra-long weekends all the time.”
“Oh, how nice. Now you’ll be able to have everything tidied up for me.”
“Derpy, are you sure you don’t want to be a weather pony?”
Derpy blinked at the apparent non sequitur. “Why?”
“Because you’re good at always finding the black cloud to put over my sunshine.” Karyn stuck out her tongue as she said it.
“You got the class you want. Be happy.”
“I am. Actually, thinking back this could be a lot of fun. The last time I was in an English class wasn’t, because it was freshman English, and it was really dumbed down. But in my last year of high school I took the honors class. I always figured it would be more difficult, and that I’d be challenged.”
Derpy scrunched up her nose. “Was it the kind of soft class you wanted?”
“Yes and no. Yes in the sense that there was more camaraderie than in other classes. Everyone in that class was my friend, I think. Actually, that may be where I started with my nerd reputation. I was so used to classes where everything had to be kept to a strict schedule, so I kept raising my hand and asking when we would get back to discussing the books instead of going off on tangents. But the teacher intended those tangents, since the discussions we would have would be just as stimulating.”
“All right, but in what sense wasn’t it easy?”
Karyn laughed at how Derpy stayed on point. “Because the material we dealt with was harder and more complicated. The stuff we did in regular English got a little worse each year, but in the honors class I finally had to deal with things like poetry and Shakespeare.”
“Well, I know what poetry is, but what about shaking spears?”
“No, he was a playwright. Actually, when you think about it, it would make a good pony name. Shakes Spears. But it’s not spelled that way. Anyway, he wrote these plays, and everyone who knows about such things says they’re the greatest ever written.”
“Why?”
It was only one word, but for a moment Karyn felt as if she were back in the class she was talking about, being challenged to explain some point of one of her essays. Then she realized that it wasn’t anything like that, but that Derpy still needed to understand, because she was representing her species.
“I’m not a scholar in this section, but I’ll tell you what I think. Part of it is how poetic the language is. It’s very flowery and laced with symbolism and double meanings. When they publish the plays to read, a lot of times they only put it on the left-hand pages of the book, and use the right-hand ones for explanations.
“Now, as I said, people who study such things say it’s the best. But to me, something that you can understand without annotations is better because it’s more accessible.
“The other part of why English teachers and such like him is how deep the stories go. They’re all about jealousy or rampant ambition or ego, and a lot of them have tragic endings. I don’t like that much either. But he did write some stuff that was nice and pleasant, and if you can get past the language, it can be entertaining. When it’s being taught in class, you have to go through weeks of learning about the stage he used, and then read the play and take quizzes on it, then write an essay. But when it’s all over the teacher will spend a week showing a movie of the play, and then it’s fun.”
Derpy listened with rapt attention. In many ways, Karyn was smarter than her, and it behooved her to pay attention. Many times she had told herself that it was important to learn about the human world for other ponies. But at that moment, she realized that she wanted to learn to grow as a pony, and to have a stronger bond with Karyn.
“I want to see it.”
“You want to see the class?”
Derpy shook her head, her ears flopping everywhere. “No, I want to see one of these movies!”
“But I’ve just gotten through telling you how difficult it is.”
“I know. That’s why I want to see it. I fully expect to be confused, but that’s been happening to me all my life.”
Karyn saw the wisdom in that. She sat at her desk and turned on the computer. After a few searches she clicked a button in the bottom right. The screen went dark as a production company logo faded in.
“You found one?” asked Derpy. “I hope it wasn’t expensive.”
“No, it’s free on one of the video sites. I guess they figure that it’s worth keeping the big-money blockbusters to the pay sites, but something like this isn’t going to lose them a lot of money, so leaving it up makes the site more popular and gets them some credit with the public.”
The movie started, and Karyn, who hadn’t seen any Shakespeare in four years, was just as hard pressed as Derpy to figure out what was going on. For the first half hour, there were constant interruptions of, “Why is she doing that?” or “What did that guy say?” Sometimes, she would pause or rewind the video a few seconds.
“But I don’t like to do that too often or too long,” Karyn said. “The video site gets temperamental with its buffering, and likes to lock up when people scan through the videos.”
As the movie progressed, though, Derpy’s questions grew less and less frequent. When the conversations led into a kind of action scene with two of the characters sword fighting, Derpy hovered in the air in excitement. Karyn gave her a sly sideways glance.
Near the end, Derpy interrupted once more. “But where’s all the dark stuff you talked about? I see a few fools here, and ironically the one they call a fool isn’t one of them. But there’s none of the death and tragedy.”
“Well, I have to confess. I didn’t think you really wanted to watch that for so long, and I know I didn’t, so I found a comedy instead.”
“But it’s not that funny either.”
“Comedy meant something different back then,” said Karyn. “Instead of being funny, it meant that instead of ending with a death, it ended…but I don’t want to spoil it.”
They finished watching, and true to the old definition of the term, most of the characters paired off to get married. The production showed the wedding over the closing credits, but Derpy insisted on watching to the end, either so engrossed in the celebration or expecting a scene after the credits.
“That was pretty cool.”
“But could you understand it?”
“No,” said Derpy. “Not the language anyway. But once I got into it I stopped paying attention to the words. I just watched the action and listened to the tone of everyone’s voice. I could tell when people were mad and when they were happy, and it made a nice story. Like I said, a lot of times I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m good at faking it.”
Karyn ended the video and suspended the computer’s operations. “Well, what would you like to do with the rest of the day? It’s too early for dinner, but if you want to go out…”
“I want to watch another!”
Karyn grinned as if she knew that this would be the answer, but she wasn’t prepared for Derpy to continue.
“But first, you said they publish the plays in books? I want to try reading it. The one we just saw. Maybe if I can go back and forth I will understand the language, and then I’ll be able to appreciate it even more.”
“Hmm…that’s tricky. The bookstore might have it, if it’s required for some English class, but—wait, what am I saying? The guy’s five hundred years old. All his stuff’s in the public domain.”
Derpy didn’t follow that, but nodded as Karyn turned the computer back on and went to a different web site. A moment later she had up a long stream of text.
“Here you go,” she said. “Read all you like. I think you can manipulate the scroll wheel without even using any adaptation spells.”
Derpy sat at the desk, and Karyn crashed on the bed to relax. But a few minutes later she heard Derpy’s sigh.
“No good?”
Derpy spun around in the chair. “No good. It’s just not the same without the actors and the movement. Really, the paper makes it seem all dead. If you ask me, your classes do it backwards. They should show you the movie first and make you write essays about that. It would be much more heartfelt and closer to what the author intended.”
“Thanks, Derpy.”
“For what?”
Karyn got up and grabbed a pen. “I think you just gave me the theme for an extra credit essay for the class I’m taking.”
“Oh, do they give those?”
“I don’t know, but what do I care? It’s only an elective, and the professor might be impressed with my cheek. Now how did it go again?”
Derpy repeated her thought, but this time with a smile.
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My best college schedule was the semester when all my classes were on Tuesday and Thursday.
It's true, though!
This is partly why we have early registration three months ahead, there's not as much rush the the coordinators can get a fairly good handle on class interest.
Personally Shakespeare just stresses my language interpretation engine too much: everything I read is translated into visual imagery, and parsing old rhythmic english takes an exhausting amount of resources for sustained reading.... But having a video background as a base, it should be much less stressful!
Keep going! ;)
Oooh, so we finally get some Mane six interaction, or at least Twilight. I'm gonna guess they go to Canterlot because of the train tickets mentioned earlier.
Has it ever been explained if Karyn is considered a foreign dignitary when in Equestria because of her alien status and being just a highly select few to ever walk/trot two worlds? Not that such status would mean anything in a homey podunk town like Ponyville but it might offer some perks when going to Canterlot where the snobby ponies would be forced to respect that at least. Now, I'm not suggesting that she's immune to local laws like some ambassador thus allowing her to flick frosted cake in Blueblood's frowny face...
3760012 Kind of like this?
*Looks up at Comedy tag*
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You know, this story is pretty fun to read and all that, but the relationship between Derpy and Karyn strikes me as inherently weird. Its more like a daughter being friends with her mother rather than two equals being friends. Which is the part that irks me, because the author does put effort into making it seem like that works both ways equally, however Derpy comes across, to me at least, as one who is rather controlling in an almost unfriendly manner. Exemplified by the fact that Karyn feels obligated to clean up to an almost obsessive standard in order to please Derpy, when Karyn herself likely would not do so normally. Additionally, Derpy is heavily stifling the use Karyn's changeling powers for the simple fact that it bothers her, Derpy, and not necessarily Karyn. Quite frankly I think that Derpy has a bit too strong of a character, and it offsets the dynamic of the relationship between them and makes it feel unnatural. Just my thoughts.
Derpy clasped her wings to Karyn’s fave. “I’ve never heard you talk so passionately about
Umm. Face?
What did they watch? I don't remember there being sword fighting in Midsummer's Night Dream or Much Ado about Nothing, which are the comedies I'm most familiar with.
Of course, my favorites are
The BBC Richard III (I actually like it better than the Olivier version)
Also, Throne of Blood and Ran. Shut up. They count.