7. Video

[sleepallthewayhome]

[Hey, it's Newt again. She's sitting next to some books by an inn bed and if you look off to the side you can see one of those newer pokemon, the blue one, sitting next to an Eevee. The Eevee seems to have a plastic dolls head with them. There is also a Luxray sitting next to them as though keeping them safe from something.]

Hi. I have a question for people who went to school.

What are the really important things you learnt there? I only got to grade two before- ...I came here and there's no schools but I still want to learn stuff. I know reading and math are important. And there's spelling and science things but I don't really know what the other stuff is.

What's important to learn?

Comments

Video

[outofhershadow]

Pfft. School's overrated.

[Lena can't really talk since she was "born" with all the knowledge she'd need to survive and keep doing Magica's work. BUT STILL...]

All the good stuff you can learn from other people, not some stuffy classroom.

Video

[sleepallthewayhome]

What's good stuff?

[Newt's knowledge of what schools are is meanwhile limited to the fact that she grew up in a company sponsored moon colony.]

And I liked school when I got to go.

[outofhershadow]

You know, stuff you'll actually use out there in the real world. Who cares about boring history lessons when you you could be learning useful stuff like how to pick locks or hotwire cars? Trust me, you'll use something like that way more than boring facts about stuffy old kings from like a million years ago.

[Truly, the best influence right here.]

[Video]

[ghoststanning]

I learned how to built my first few cars in high school shop class!

[Ray that's probably... not a super important thing you can learn in school...]

[Video]

[sleepallthewayhome]

You built a car....in a class about shopping?

[There are many things in that she does not understand. At least she knows what a car is.]

[Video]

[ghoststanning]

Yup! Well, "shop" is short for "Workshopping", and it's basically a class where you learn how to build things! I was the only one who wanted to build something like a car but you can learn to build a lot of things in those classes.

It's a shame no one else wanted to build a car, though. I gotta say it's really relaxing once you know how to build them!

[neverstudied]

What's important kinda depends on what you're interested in. If you wanna be an artist when you grow up, it's more important to develop your skills there than to learn about nuclear engineering. Unless you want to be both, I guess.

Really though, kid, I learned most of the stuff I needed to learn outside of school. Figuring out how to deal with people is way more important than being incredible at science.

[Says the ex-professor with two PhDs.]

But if you're really invested in learning as much school stuff as you can, go to libraries and research topics you wanna know more about, work your way up from there.

[sleepallthewayhome]

I'm not really sure what I want to be when I grow up. I know I want to be better at math and spelling and reading. Those seem helpful.

...How do you learn how to deal with people?

[People sound complicated.]

That's what I'm trying to do. I'm getting better at reading. I just don't know what people do learn in school.

[neverstudied]

If you don't know, then just becoming a jack-of-all-trades is pretty smart for the time being.

Oh, boy, thats the million dollar question right there. [Venkman leans back a bit in his chair, thinking it over for a minute.] Well. You gotta be good at listening to others. And you gotta learn how to read people- figure out how they tick, what they want, so you can play off of that. You gotta know how to get what you want by paying attention to what other people want.

That make any sense so far?

[Venkman continues to be a poor role model for anyone who isn't an aspiring conman.]

You hit most of the major stuff on the head- math, reading, spelling, science... Most of the more complex stuff is for when you're older and you've got all the basics down.

video;

[sassymaru]

Ah, reading, of course. I see you've already listed it, but I cannot stress it enough.

Social skills, I hear, are also something you acquire in your schooling.

video;

[sleepallthewayhome]

[She nods seriously.]

I practise by reading to my pokemon. I like reading.

Social skills. Is that by making friends?

[She has friends here, and she had them at school...sorta.]

video;

[sassymaru]

Wonderful. I'm certain they enjoy your stories.

Indeed -- it's part of the skillset.

[sociallychallenged]

Art is pretty important.

So is history, but learning history here is pointless. Nobody's got the same history. [It's a crapshoot.] Okay, I guess maybe it's not pointless for the time you're staying here, I just don't think any of us could do the best job of showing you.

[Maybe some people, but even their best will come across some stumbling blocks.]

[sleepallthewayhome]

It is? I didn't know art was important. I like to draw but it doesn't seem like it's something that would help you much.

[Her version of help is always leaning towards, survival skills so...]

I only really learned the history of my colony and the company and I think they lied about some stuff. But I guess that would only be useful back home.

[Even with the colony gone, she is the only person who has the story the school taught them.]

Couldn't we ask the locals about the history here? Or do they have fake stories too?

[sociallychallenged]

We have artists that help us in detective work. And they help people have clothes. And they eventually are supposed to show you how to not get paint all over your nice pants but I was never smart enough to figure that one out.

[Which is his idea of a joke to a kid, but whatever, he can fail as hard as he wants to at humor.]

P.E. is important too. It makes you stronger and teaches you how to be healthier.

[He obviously should go through it again but he's a grown-up and he'll do what he wants... god this conversation makes him miss Cole, though. Enough that he gets the slightest chest ache from it.]

[video]

[captainash]

I learned some strong engineering bases in school, but that comes after advanced math. Normally there'd be geography, politics and history, too, if you don't mind knowing more about another world than about yours. What else... We did a bit of art and music, physical education for sports... And there's elective classes, if you'd like to learn how to cook or prepare a budget.

[video]

[sleepallthewayhome]

Oh wow. That's a lot. I wish they had schools here.

[But she's going to be making a list of this all anyway. At least they have libraries.]

I can make some food and is a budget just looking after your money? I think I read that somewhere.

[Video]

[agent3]

Reading 'n math, but...adding 'n su'tracting.

[Subtracting, Thida.]

Guess y'can learn multiply 'n divide? But harder 'n that, I don't think y'need it for regular stuff. But readin', yeah, there's words everywhere. Gotta know 'em.

[Video]

[sleepallthewayhome]

I started to learn to multiply and divide. We were going to learn it in my next grade and my older brother was always bragging about he could do it, so I really wanted to learn it.

[And it's apparently been long enough that she's starting to mention she even had a brother.]

Yeah, reading is really important. People make text posts and there's all sorts of stuff written down.

video;

[schachmeister]

There is geography and biology. And history. Which might not sound immediately relevant or even boring to some people, but things that happened in the past can really affect how people act today, so it is good to know if you want to understand other people.

And I think there probably are some schools here. Not everybody starts training pokemon when they are ten. And you can even take classes online. That is what I've been doing.

video;

[sleepallthewayhome]

[Adding the first two to her list of things to look up.]

That makes sense. If something bad happens, it's good to know about it, so people don't do the same thing again.

[cough *idiot companies* cough.]

I haven't seen any real schools. There's schools online?

Do you think they'd let me join?

Video

[thegreenhornet]

A lot of people is gonna say math, but I think what's important in school is to interact with people. You gotta know how to make them do what you want.

[And boy did Britt spend years making people do what he wanted while he coasted along]

Video

[sleepallthewayhome]

[She is getting the best advice.]

How do you get them to do that? Most people at home never listened to me about important things.

[video]

[pkemeter]

Well, I would say that it's of utmost importance to learn the basics of any subject. For example, math, basic scientific principles, writing, reading, history...so on and so forth. Of course, feel free to focus on whatever studies appeal to you the most and pursue those to the best of your ability. Not many people realize that all disciplines are intrinsically interconnected and that the study of a wide variety of subjects can help supplement the subject one is interested in.

[That's...surprisingly useful information from Egon, of all people.]

For example, when I went to elementary school, I taught myself how to construct bombs and identify poisonous fungi for the purposes of growing them. As for studying the material you wish to learn, I would suggest finding a textbook of some sort and reading the entirety of its contents in one sitting.

[...Nevermind.]

[video]

[sleepallthewayhome]

[Well this is all really good information and Newt is going to be looking up a lot of that. This is all going great-]

Do you think they have a textbooks on how to build a bomb? I'd like to know how to do that.

[-oh right, she's from a survival horror canon.]