Living With Difficult Women [Tuesday, Period 5]
Max had spent a large chunk of the past week rethinking precisely how he was going to run this class with all the... women in it. He hadn't really come up with a solution he liked, but it was class time now so it was apparently time to go with a solution he didn't much care for.
"Welcome back, everyone," he began as he looked around at his students. "This class is intended to be a practical one, but for us to do that we're going to have to be candid with one another. That, however, requires trust, and we don't all know one another that well." He quirked an eyebrow, wondering if anyone was going to challenge that assertion. "We're going to try to remedy that." He grinned suddenly before adding, "The trust part."
"You're going to pair up. Then each of you is going to share a deeply private secret with the other one. That way each of you will know that if you violate the trust of the other students in this class, someone else here holds a serious piece of information to punish you with. If the person you're partnered with judges your secret to be insufficiently powerful, they can demand another, so you're better off sharing one major thing than being forced to go through a dozen things that almost qualify."
Max let a hard gaze drift slowly across the room, letting it rest on each student until he felt he'd driven home how serious he was. "Understand this: by receiving these secrets you're being entrusted with something important. Violating that trust is not something I will tolerate. The only reason we're doing this is to help everyone to feel like the can be candid because they'll know that everyone has shared something here they don't want spread around."
He gestured to the handwavy list he had up. "I've assigned partners randomly. Find yours and get to it. I'll be stopping by to check on how each of you are doing."
"Oh, and Pendragon, Cauthon, I want to see each of you after class."
"Welcome back, everyone," he began as he looked around at his students. "This class is intended to be a practical one, but for us to do that we're going to have to be candid with one another. That, however, requires trust, and we don't all know one another that well." He quirked an eyebrow, wondering if anyone was going to challenge that assertion. "We're going to try to remedy that." He grinned suddenly before adding, "The trust part."
"You're going to pair up. Then each of you is going to share a deeply private secret with the other one. That way each of you will know that if you violate the trust of the other students in this class, someone else here holds a serious piece of information to punish you with. If the person you're partnered with judges your secret to be insufficiently powerful, they can demand another, so you're better off sharing one major thing than being forced to go through a dozen things that almost qualify."
Max let a hard gaze drift slowly across the room, letting it rest on each student until he felt he'd driven home how serious he was. "Understand this: by receiving these secrets you're being entrusted with something important. Violating that trust is not something I will tolerate. The only reason we're doing this is to help everyone to feel like the can be candid because they'll know that everyone has shared something here they don't want spread around."
He gestured to the handwavy list he had up. "I've assigned partners randomly. Find yours and get to it. I'll be stopping by to check on how each of you are doing."
"Oh, and Pendragon, Cauthon, I want to see each of you after class."