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Friday 10/11/91
Dear Harry
You weren't a bad friend. I'm glad that you were so excited to be going to boarding school and leaning so many new things and you knew I would want to know all about it. I knew you'd be interested in what I was doing but I was so keen to learn about your new world and school and everything that what I had to say about my classes seemed boring in comparison.
One other thing Harry, please don't run yourself down, you're definitely smart enough to have been sorted into the house of the studious. You have never been allowed to do well in school but you're actually reading books well above the norm for your age level, and your understanding of the things I write in my letters and some of the things you write shows a level of emotional and intellectual maturity that just doesn't happen in people of less than average intelligence. I would say you're easily capable of being close to the top of your class if you try. If anyone was rejected due to not being smart enough for Ravenclaw it would have been your book-loving friend Hermione. If she believes everything she reads, she hasn't developed the analytical mind and critical thinking necessary for true intelligence, though she sounds like she has a fairly good reading level and memory.
My professors aren't as interesting as yours. You could say that they are more professional or more standoffish. They come in lecture and leave we don't really get to know their personalities at all except through their teaching styles. Our classes are a great deal larger than yours too. My English class, which is a requirement or I wouldn't bother taking it, is six hundred students. I must admit that that class is a bit of a disappointment. I didn't choose it because I was interested in it, it was just the one that fitted into my timetable with my other subjects the best, but I still thought it would be more interesting than it is. It's not a literature class, but rather on the development of language and how it changes with time. I didn't want to choose a literature class, that would remind me too much of Mom. The textbooks, and all the extra reading they suggested was interesting but the lectures themselves don't include anything that's not in the books and even the lecturer seems bored by the material. The assignment should be interesting, it's about comparing how languages have changed differently over time in different places. For example, we both speak English but often words don't mean the same thing to each of us but America was settled by the British so our language must have been the same back then. Likewise, Australia and New Zealand were settled mostly by the British though much later and their language hasn't changed so much, though the native languages have had a dramatically different effect on their accents.
My Chemistry Lecturer is my favourite, he taught the Chemistry class I did last year too. This year I have prac with him as well which is great. He's one of those teachers who don't mind if you come into the lab to work on things as long as he's there to keep everything safe.
My Math professor is much more interesting than last year's professor, every time she teaches us something, she likes to include an example of how the math is used in the real world, sometimes in industry or building, architecture and engineering, or how things have gone wrong because the math wasn't used correctly when it should have been. Some of the connections are quite obscure and amusing.
Physics is amazing, we're studying stuff I hadn't read about before, and the lecturer is a leader in this field of research and very passionate about it. I won't frustrate you by telling you about it now, while you're at a school that wouldn't allow you to look it up and understand it. I'm not saying you wouldn't understand it, you have a fairly good knowledge of the subject from what you've already read but it would frustrate me no end if someone wrote to me about a fascinating new topic in a subject I enjoy that I couldn't read up more on.
I like my biochemistry class too, the prac so far have been interesting though I don't really like the prac tutor. The lectures aren't bad either, though there seems to be quite a few students who aren't really interested and are doing it as a filler class. The lecturer assumes we have done the assigned reading and I must say I would have difficulty understanding the finer nuances of his lectures if I hadn't, and I see many of the students missing the point and the lecturer is quite short with anyone who asks a question that has been covered by the readings. I think that this lecturer will also base quite a few of his exam questions on these points.
Ethan and I are getting on well, he was almost as glad to be back sharing a room as I was to have him back. He said he had a good summer with his family but it was awkward to go back to being treated like a kid again after being used to being on his own and making his own decisions at college. We only have mathematics together this semester, but he did the physics class I'm doing now last year and I did the chemistry class he's now doing last year as well so we still study together quite often.
See this letter's been nearly all about me, and I hope you've been interested in it all. That's what friends do.
Yes we call where we live a house, though it is huge. There are various competitions between the houses and a lot of pranking and friendly rivalry. We spend the first week or two visiting the houses and being interviewed and then get to choose which house seems to fit our personality best. I think that I understand why they sort you into houses. In the houses here the older students tend to look out for their housemates if they see them out and about and would limit how much trouble they get into, I imagine your school wants to foster the same sense of responsibility in it's older students, to look out for the cubs of the house. Among other things it would cut down on the amount of time the professors have to spend babysitting and dealing with minor issues.
I hope you still love school and are making more friends than just Ron. How are you getting on with your dorm mates? It can't be easy sharing a room with four other people and I imagine it will get worse as it becomes too cold to spend as much time outside. The room must be huge, given that they haven't given you bunk beds to fit you all in. How are you going keeping up with the work? Do you think that you could do a correspondence subject or two next year or are you struggling with what you've got already? I don't mean to nag you and it's okay if you don't want to keep up your nonmagical education, obviously everyone else at your school does okay without it.
Your friend always,
Spencer
A/N: Thank you to all those who reviewed followed or favourited this story for your support.