Slytherin Thoughts on Course Selection
Prof. Will Lestrange
March 2021
When I first enrolled in this school seven and a half years ago, I was brought on as a Quidditch recruit. At the time, I wasn't expecting to have much interest in anything on offer that wasn't directly connected to the pitch. But I learned very quickly (with the help of then-Promising Student Maxwell "Max" Shadow) how important my progress in coursework was for supporting the House. Not only are classes the easiest and largest source by far for earning House Points, but in order to play Quidditch I needed to make satisfactory progress on at least one class a term! So after discussing various options with Max, I ended up in five classes for my first term: HOL 101, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Languages 101, Muggle Puzzles, and HOL Quidditch. And I did well enough in these classes (had I found one more word on a specific word search, I would have had a perfect 1500 class points for the term: 1500 would mean the maximum of 300 points in each of five classes) that I felt confident about my progress towards the school.
Seventy-five term courses, twelve OWLs, and three NEWTs later – along with teaching three courses of my own, I think I have a good sense of how to make HOL course selection enhance your HOL experience: if you keep the following tips in mind when it's time to sign up for classes, they should serve you well!
1) When choosing your classes, keep in mind that the bulk of your time in each class will be spent interacting with the *assignments* (homework, extra credit, project, and exams) – not the lessons. So even if the course material itself is an interesting topic, make sure that the assignments look like things you want to do. For example, I love solving puzzles – and therefore look for classes which allow me to earn a significant number of points by solving puzzles. Likewise, if you have a hard time coming up with more than a few words to respond to a writing prompt you should think very carefully about taking classes which require long writing assignments for your points... regardless of how interesting the course subject seems!
(As a warning, though: while it isn't that hard to earn tons of quills and points without writing essays, it is nearly impossible to do well in your OWLs and NEWTs without being able to handle long-answer prompts. So if you plan on advancing to your OWLs or NEWTs, I suggest making sure that you can write at least 500 words on a topic if you absolutely have to!)
Personally, while I can definitely write long prompts as needed, I find writing prompts exhausting if I don't have much interest in a topic. So I try to not take more than one or two classes with such prompts each term – and I was especially careful during my OWL year as OWLs added up to 1500 words of essay prompts each month as well!
2) Think about how many points you would like to earn from a class before signing up; most likely, you will be thinking in terms of one of three goals – listed from easiest to hardest.
3) One more thing to keep in mind is the instructor of the class. Veteran HOL students may remember a time when the reliability of the instructor really made a difference for the quality of one's class experience. But these days, between the number of highly qualified Class Assistants and the existence of a Class Committee, you can still expect to get all the points you earn for a class regardless of instructor-related factors beyond your control! Rather, the instructor is important for an entirely different set of reasons:
One last thing: people used to look for classes to prepare them for other parts of HOL – either later exams (namely OWLs and NEWTs) or Quidditch. I do not believe that this is necessary now for the following reasons:
If you keep my advice in mind, chances are you will find your next set of classes will enhance your HOL experience; good luck with your future course selections!
When I first enrolled in this school seven and a half years ago, I was brought on as a Quidditch recruit. At the time, I wasn't expecting to have much interest in anything on offer that wasn't directly connected to the pitch. But I learned very quickly (with the help of then-Promising Student Maxwell "Max" Shadow) how important my progress in coursework was for supporting the House. Not only are classes the easiest and largest source by far for earning House Points, but in order to play Quidditch I needed to make satisfactory progress on at least one class a term! So after discussing various options with Max, I ended up in five classes for my first term: HOL 101, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Languages 101, Muggle Puzzles, and HOL Quidditch. And I did well enough in these classes (had I found one more word on a specific word search, I would have had a perfect 1500 class points for the term: 1500 would mean the maximum of 300 points in each of five classes) that I felt confident about my progress towards the school.
Seventy-five term courses, twelve OWLs, and three NEWTs later – along with teaching three courses of my own, I think I have a good sense of how to make HOL course selection enhance your HOL experience: if you keep the following tips in mind when it's time to sign up for classes, they should serve you well!
1) When choosing your classes, keep in mind that the bulk of your time in each class will be spent interacting with the *assignments* (homework, extra credit, project, and exams) – not the lessons. So even if the course material itself is an interesting topic, make sure that the assignments look like things you want to do. For example, I love solving puzzles – and therefore look for classes which allow me to earn a significant number of points by solving puzzles. Likewise, if you have a hard time coming up with more than a few words to respond to a writing prompt you should think very carefully about taking classes which require long writing assignments for your points... regardless of how interesting the course subject seems!
(As a warning, though: while it isn't that hard to earn tons of quills and points without writing essays, it is nearly impossible to do well in your OWLs and NEWTs without being able to handle long-answer prompts. So if you plan on advancing to your OWLs or NEWTs, I suggest making sure that you can write at least 500 words on a topic if you absolutely have to!)
Personally, while I can definitely write long prompts as needed, I find writing prompts exhausting if I don't have much interest in a topic. So I try to not take more than one or two classes with such prompts each term – and I was especially careful during my OWL year as OWLs added up to 1500 words of essay prompts each month as well!
2) Think about how many points you would like to earn from a class before signing up; most likely, you will be thinking in terms of one of three goals – listed from easiest to hardest.
- Just earn a quill – if this is your goal, you should look carefully at the quill requirements for the class you're interested in. The most common requirement is "150 points and an attempted final" (this is what I require in the classes I teach) but different classes have different requirements. Looking at the points you can earn from the assignments, can you imagine yourself doing the work to meet the quill requirements?
- Earn as many points for my house as reasonable – if this is your goal, look at all the assignments – and make sure that there's no large required assignment where you can't really imagine yourself earning the points... or a "choice" between options where none of them are to your liking. As far as House Points are concerned, 299 – or even 290 – isn't that much worse than 300, so if this is your goal... don't worry too much about a one-off tricky question!
- Get that perfect 300 points – here, you want to minimize the number of "opportunities" to lose points, even one or two: this ranges from very difficult required prompts to simple trick questions. Classes that give significant amounts of freedom of choice ("there are 100+ points worth of options for this class; attempt up to 60") are great for this. In fact, essay assignments are helpful as well: while it takes more time and effort to earn points writing an essay than most other assignments, it's much easier to write an essay worth full marks (meet the word requirements, stay generally on topic, follow directions, and avoid obvious mistakes) than to ensure the rest of your work will not attract point deductions. One more thing: even though a class may have a few trick questions, 300 may not be out of reach as classes often allow for opportunities to make up for a few lost points! (This often takes the form of a 5 to 10 point class survey, but other ways to earn these points are possible too.)
3) One more thing to keep in mind is the instructor of the class. Veteran HOL students may remember a time when the reliability of the instructor really made a difference for the quality of one's class experience. But these days, between the number of highly qualified Class Assistants and the existence of a Class Committee, you can still expect to get all the points you earn for a class regardless of instructor-related factors beyond your control! Rather, the instructor is important for an entirely different set of reasons:
- If the instructor is someone you want to impress, you might want to take a class from them and do well in order to earn their respect. A prime example of this might be your Head of House: during my time at HOL I have had three different Heads of House - Daphne Marin-Booth, Cody Lewis, and Scarlet Leslie-Lewis... and I've made sure to take classes from all three, taking pains to ensure my work was worthy of them. Be careful, though: you need to actually do the work well – not just sign up – in order to make the impression you want!
- If you have enjoyed either the teaching style or the social company of a specific instructor, you might want to take more classes from them – even in a subject that normally might not interest you – in order to better understand how they think. Personally, my favourite class my first term was Languages 101 – taught by a Ravenclaw Student Teacher named Amy Lupin (who most recently served as my Deputy Head of House in Slytherin). Because I enjoyed that class so much, I made sure to take other, more challenging classes from her – ranging from Ancient Civilizations (which I have had the honour of taking over) to two classes which really taxed my senses of visual perception: Typography Basics and Introduction to Sign Language. All of these classes were worth my decision to take them!
- Once you move further along through your time at HOL, you might want to support a new Student Teacher (or Professor) you like by taking one of their classes and rewarding them with well thought-out assignments that they enjoy reading. This will likely boost their morale and make them more likely to continue on with offering classes in the future, which may help you out in the future!
One last thing: people used to look for classes to prepare them for other parts of HOL – either later exams (namely OWLs and NEWTs) or Quidditch. I do not believe that this is necessary now for the following reasons:
- Each OWL exam generally comes with its own self-contained lesson; the lesson itself gives you all the information you need to write the OWL. For example, even though I never took Ancient Runes as a class, I was able to confidently complete my Ancient Runes OWL (the first OWL of the year) by reading the lesson and consulting the sources listed. Further, while previous NEWTs may have expected the same core knowledge base out of all students, the current NEWT system is much more open-ended and allows you to play to your strengths (so long as writing is one of your strengths).
- When Quidditch was played at HOL in the past, many classes (History of Magic comes to mind) contained, in their course material, many questions on the Quidditch set that existed at the time along with their answers. But with the Quidditch game being in the process of being revamped, "improving your Quidditch skills by learning dozens of answers as they're taught in a given class" is no longer the awesome strategy it once was!
If you keep my advice in mind, chances are you will find your next set of classes will enhance your HOL experience; good luck with your future course selections!