Jun 17, 2012 09:22
- What sort of profession in the wizarding world would you choose and why? I would want to be a Hogwarts professor, definitely. Why? Because I'm a teacher. I don't just mean that teaching is my job in the Muggle world (although it is, sort of; I'm an assistant teacher right now), but because I've come to realize that teaching is in my blood. It's what I always wanted to do; every part time job I ever applied for was education related, sometimes as a teacher, sometimes in the office doing admin work, but always education at all levels, from pre-school through university. I told myself I wanted to do something else, something more glamorous with better pay, but the truth is that I want to teach, and what better place to teach than Hogwarts?
As for what subject, I think I would want to teach Muggle Studies or Magical History: one of the less "practical" and more "theoretical" subjects, which as an educator, I think Hogwarts is seriously lacking.
- You have to venture deep into the Forbidden Forest one night. Pick one Harry Potter character other than Hagrid and one object (muggle or magical), besides your wand, that you'd want with you. It took me a long time to answer this question. (I had to leave it blank, fill out everything else, and come back to it at the end.) I think that I would want to be with Professor McGonagall, especially if I were her student. She might not be the physically strongest character in the books, but she's incredibly brave and protective of her students and everyone at Hogwarts. I imagine that I would be going with her into the Forbidden Forest to get some magical samples of something to do advanced transfiguration research. I'm not the type of student who would sneak in on my own, or with my friends.
Other than my wand, I think I would want to bring in a good, old fashioned Muggle flashlight. (Assuming it would work at Hogwarts.) Even if I couldn't find my way back out again, I could use a flashlight to signal SOS in Morse code and hope that somebody comes to find me. Sometimes I panic in really stressful situations (unless I'm responsible for someone else's safety) so I'd like to have some Muggle reassurance that I could at least see where I was going if I freaked out and forgot that, duh!, I can do magic. (I'm not very outdoors-y, either.)
- If you had the opportunity to live forever, but your family and friends did not, what would you choose? And if you did choose to live forever, what would you do with eternity? Oh no, absolutely not! I'm not exactly looking forward to dying (is anyone?), but I wouldn't want to outlive everyone that I've ever known and loved. Even if there were more people to meet and fall in love with as the years wore on, eventually everyone would pass away on me and I might be trapped in an immortal body forever and ever with all of my loved ones always dying off on me. No, thank you!
- If you could travel back in time to one point, when and where would you go? Why? I wish I could go back to just several months ago, the last time I got to talk with my best friend, and tell him my feelings for him and that, no matter what happens, I will always consider him my friend and even if we can't talk any more, I will remember him fondly. I hope he knows those things anyway, but I never got the chance to actually say it to him.
- What HP character do you identify with most and why? Probably a lot of people here say this, but the truth is, I always felt like a Hermione. When I first read Sorcerer's Stone wayyyy back in the day (2000?), I remember feeling like finally, there was a girl like me in my books! As a sixth grader, I was a shy, somewhat bossy know-it-all with frizzy hair. As I grew up with Hermione, I always related to her, especially at the end of Lupin's Defense Against the Dark Arts exam, when her boggart turns into Professor McGonagall telling her she failed everything. I graduated from college over a year ago now, and I still occasionally dream that my strictest, most McGonagall-like professor is telling me that I failed her class, thereby ruining my near-perfect GPA at the very last minute.
There's something about her need to prove her intelligence that resonates with me. Hermione is a Muggle-born student surrounded by mostly Wizarding peers, so it's understandable that she would feel like she has to prove that she belongs. Sometimes, the only way to win that approval in situations like those is by being the best. Hermione was my inspiration when I went to a technical high school and studied in a male dominated field. In a class of thirty web design students, there were three girls, and I did have to constantly prove that I belonged in the boys' club by getting the best grades. Later, when I went to college, I studied at a private university in a big city, but I had grown up going to a underfunded public school in the middle of nowhere, so it always felt like everyone was better educated than me and I had to show them that I was just as good.
Hermione was also a social justice advocate, which is a big part of my life and my identity. I think S.P.E.W. is something most social justice advocates can identify with, a phase we went through when we knew there was something wrong with the world and we wanted to fix it, but our privilege got in the way and we embarrassed ourselves (and maybe others) with our clumsy attempts to make the world a better place. What poor Hermione needed then was a mentor to guide her advocacy. Rule #1 is never presume to speak for groups you are not a member of, but use your privilege to make space for them to speak for themselves. I've been lucky to have mentors who helped me grow as a feminist, let me make mistakes while minimizing the damage I did in my early blundering about. I understand Hermione's desire to to good and the awkward results that happen when you don't have a community of likeminded individuals to help you.
- What would you see if you looked into the Mirror of Erised? My answer has changed radically from what it would have been if I filled out this form even a month ago. Now, I think it would show me my best friend, and me having the opportunity to talk with him again. I don't think now that I will ever get to tell him how much I care/d for him, or say goodbye. Last time we talked, we were making plans for when we could get in touch regularly, and now I'll likely never get to speak with him again. He was my best friend for most of the time that I was in college, and we helped each other through a lot of hard times, so never having the opportunity to say good bye to each other really hurts.
- Do you believe that moral actions should be judged by the intentions behind them, or by the consequences they create? I honestly believe that both have to be taken into account before passing judgement. What's that classic scenario, about someone stealing bread to feed their family? I think the world is too imperfect and complicated to pass moral judgement in a broad way without hearing out the specifics of each incident.
For myself, I have a set of written in stone rules for my own personal ethics and each individual case, if you will, is judged against them before deciding.
Since this answer will most likely sound like a cop out, the rules in question are, basically, the Principles and Purposes of the Unitarian Universalist Association, which you can read here, although I am not a Unitarian Universalist. (I'm not religious, but the first list on there is an adequate summary of my ethical standards. I don't want to bore everyone with an ethics lecture, but I can edit to elaborate if voters think it's necessary.)
- What was your ideal job as a kid? Has that changed? What is your ideal job now? When I was a kid, I wanted to do something glamorous. I was interested in anything that would get me out of the nowhere town where I grew up, to show everyone that I escaped. I remember in sixth grade, I was obsessed with space. I wanted to be the first person on Mars, despite bad eyesight and minimal hand-eye coordination. Eventually, my dreams became a little more realistic - for one thing, I wasn't interested in joining the military, and Air Force duty is a de facto requirement for becoming an astronaut - but I still had dreams about doing an interesting job in the city, somewhere, as a web designer or an author or something that would prove everybody wrong.
Now, I'm not so sure. As mentioned above, I'm currently an assistant teacher and I've finally admitted to myself that I want to be an educator, but I'm still not sure what level. I enjoy working with the little ones (right now, I'm an assistant in a first grade classroom), but I think older children - grade five or so - would be fun to work with, because by that age, there's so much out there to teach them and they'd be old enough to talk to about social justice. I try to introduce basic ideas to my students - like asking permission before you tickle someone and stopping if they say no, even if they're laughing - but so much of their educational time is, obviously, still devoted to simple skills like reading and writing - letter sounds and spaces between words, etc. Watching them grow is amazing, but I would love to be able to get into the nitty gritty with my students sometimes. I've thought about returning to university of a PhD, because I would love to be a professor, where I would (ideally) have the freedom to really get into all of the gory details with my students.
- If you were able to invent one spell, potion, or charm, what would it do, what would you use it for or how would you use it, and what would you call it? This seems trivial, but I would want to invent a spell that allows modern Muggle electronics to function properly in magical environments like Hogwarts. Especially in this modern day and age, cutting off electronic communication risks really alienating Muggle-born children from their families, who would probably be used to instant communication and not, you know, owls. I think integrating modern Muggle technology would be beneficial to the Wizarding community as a whole; remember that when Arthur Weasely got bitten by Nagini, stitches were considered a new and revolutionary idea at St. Mungos. Us Muggles might not be able to do magic, but we've invented wonderful and amazing technologies to make up for it, and the magical community might benefit from how we've learned to compensate for not having magical abilities.
I also think that integrating Muggle technology would, over time, lessen anti-Muggle prejudice except for the most snobbish of Luddites. Even well intentioned Witches and Wizards often look down on Muggles, because, poor dears, we can't do magic. I think if more Witches and Wizards were aware of Muggle ingenuity, and how much they've already gained from interacting with Muggles (they use a steam train to get to Hogwarts, and their government (in England, anyway) is based on the Muggle system there), there would be less discrimination against Muggles and Muggle-born Wizarding children.
I think I would call the spell humana ingenium, which Google Translate tells me is Latin for "human ingenuity." (See? One of those things that Muggles invented! It doesn't always work perfectly, but it did help me with my Japanese homework in college.)
- If you were to face a boggart, what would it turn into? And what does it turn into when you throw the counter-spell, Riddikulus? I think if I were to have been asked this a few months ago, or to be asked a few months from now, the answer might be very different, but faced with a boggart today, I think it would turn into my best friend telling me he hates me, that he was the one who ratted me out, that he never really cared about me anyway and doesn't miss me at all. If I still had my wits about me to throw the counter-spell, I think it would turn into someone else, whoever actually tattled (honestly, I'm not sure who did it), taking off a mask that looks like him and giving me the opportunity to lay into someone who would betray me like that. Given that I would suffer no social consequences for bitching out a boggart, I would have an awful lot to say. The poor boggart might just give up at that point, or find someone less loud and angry to frighten.
- What do you look for in a friend? I look for someone who makes me laugh, first of all. I'm not a scientist, but doesn't laughing produce endorphins that make you feel all happy? So that makes sense, on a superficial level, and I like having shared interests - to laugh about together, of course. Going deeper than just a friendly acquaintance, I look for someone who I know I can trust and who knows they can trust me. I often turn to my friends for help when I'm feeling down, which lately has been more often than not, but I also want them to know that I love them and they can come to me for anything at any time and I will do whatever I can to help them.
Before all of that, however, my friends need to respect my beliefs. I'm not asking that they always agree with me, but I'm a feminist. My feminism is important to me, and it's a major part of my identity and my life. I'm not willing to put up with hearing "but men and women are equal now, so why are you complaining?" when female representatives are being silenced during debates about women's reproductive health, and so on. I won't even bother getting to know someone who tries to explain my experiences to me. I am the authority on my own life.
- What trait most annoys you about other people? Hypocrisy.
I hate it when people have standards for others that they don't uphold for themselves. I'm believe in my principals, and I know that life is messy and sometimes we strike terrible bargains just to get by in an imperfect world, but c'mon, folks, at least try to stand by what you believe. I hate being told what to do by people who don't do it themselves.
On a related note, I hate it when arguments set up a lose-lose situation for the other party. A recent example from my own life: if I (a woman) wear make-up, then I am frivolous and vain; on the other hand, if I don't wear make-up, then I am ugly and unfuckable. (I don't usually wear make-up, except for fun, but I don't judge other women's choices and how they decide to survive under kyriarchy.)
- What do you think are your top five abilities or qualities?
- Academia. I graduated from college about a year ago with an almost perfect GPA (3.94). I'm good at school. I'm good at writing papers, I'm good at class discussions, I'm good at getting everything done on time even when that seems impossible, but - even if I do say so myself, I'm very…
- Hardworking. I hate leaving a thing half done, even if it kills me to finish it. I want to do my best - the best - at everything, because I am…
- Ambitious as sin. Seriously, do you think I worked a part-time job twenty hours a week, took five classes a semester and taught incoming first year college students how to survive on campus because I liked sleeping five hours a night and spending at least half of my weekend holed up in the library? I mean, I enjoyed my job and the schoolwork was fascinating and I can sleep when I'm dead, but it was incredibly validating to get all of those academic merit awards when I graduated in the top 10% of my class.
- Kind. I recently "broke up" with some of my closest friends back home (right now, I live in a foreign country) and it hurt. I didn't think I had acted dishonorably, and one of them once told me that I was "one of the most kindhearted people [he] had ever met." I don't know what changed 'cause I'm still who I've always been, but I do know that people who saw the conflict and people who didn't contacted me to say that they thought I was a good, caring person and that means a lot to me. More positively, my weekend plans include making little presents of candy and small toys for my first graders, because their school year ends next Wednesday. (Depending on when this is posted, it may already be over by the time you're reading this.)
- Adventurous! As previously mentioned, I'm currently living in a very big city of a foreign country where I speak just enough of the language to ask directions and read street signs - both useful skills to have, considering my sense of direction isn't great. It's been improving since I've started taking long bike rides to explore the side streets and get out of the major tourist centers. I love going new places and seeing new things, and I'm up for almost any new experience that doesn't involve imbibing mood altering substances. (I'm a teetotaler.)
- What do you think are your top five weaknesses or worst qualities?
- Insecure. All of that ambition and strong work ethic comes from a deep seated fear that I am stupid and lazy and I'm just faking everyone out, pretending to be intelligent. If I let my guard down and I'm not the best, I worry that everyone will find out I'm secretly a scam.
- Competitive. A little competition is a good motivator, but in the past, I've taken it too far, to the point where it strained my friendships. This is definitely related to the first trait, insecurity, and a constant need to prove myself.
- Status-oriented. I live in a big, famous city. I love this place, I really do. The sights and sounds and smells enchant me every day. Just yesterday, I pulled my bike up on the sidewalk, out of the way, so I could stop for awhile and stare at a tower that I can see every single day on my walk to the train station, because the clouds were hiding it just so, and it was breathtaking. There's always another street to explore, and I love that, but I can't lie: I also really love being able to say that I was at this or that famous shrine or temple the other day, just by accident, or I had lunch in a popular fashionable shopping district because I felt like it, and the oldest public park in the country is on my way home, so sometimes I walk through there and admire the cherry blossoms to stretch my legs. (I'm of two minds about whether this is a bad thing or a neutral thing. Sometimes I feel like a vain peacock when I admit this to myself, and other times I figure everyone probably does it, too.)
- Bitter. I'm working on this one, but the truth is, that I am a bitter sonofabitch and I am often motivated by spite. I don't think that is, necessarily, entirely a bad thing. I've gotten far when often the only thing keeping me from a rage quit was knowing that if I gave up now, everyone who told me I wouldn't make it would be right, and I couldn't stand the humiliation. On the other hand, being bitter hurts and I'm tired of that. I'm trying not to get all growly right now, thinking about the reasons I'm so angry at the world sometimes.
- Disorganized. Despite that hardworking thing, mentioned above, I'm actually a complete train wreck. My dirty clothes somehow never quite make it into the laundry basket. Especially my socks. Growing up, my mom often called me "Hurricane Leslie" (my legal name) because I was such a mess. I can usually keep on top of organization at work, but sometimes things get busy or I get depressed (or just tired - damn kids wear me out sometimes!) and papers disappear on me. I've gotten better at compensating for this inherent disorganization, but not much better at just being more organized. Maybe one of these days, I'll learn to actually just put things where they belong the first time, so I don't have to remember where they are or try to find them later.
- Define in your own words the following key traits:
- Courage: Courage is doing the right thing, even if you're afraid. It is not the absence of fear, it's giving fear the finger and doing what you have to do.
- Loyalty: Loyalty is sticking by your friends, even especially when they're going through a rough patch.
- Intelligence: Intelligence is not merely knowing things, but applying those facts skillfully in a variety of situations. It's also knowing what you don't know.
- Ambition: Ambition is a drive to be successful. How each individual defines success will vary, but an ambitious person will stop at nothing to see their dreams through to the end.**
- Name: Frances J., or Meep
- Age: 23
- Where did you find out about us? Some people mentioned hogwartsishome as a community they enjoy in a team_poetry chat for writerverse, although I've been peripherally aware of the existence of the community for a long time; it's hard not to, if you're a Harry Potter fan on LiveJournal.
- Do you plan on being active in the communities once you are sorted? Of course! That's the point, isn't it?
sorted: slytherin,
term xxiii