"Huh, okay. I guess I'll see then."

He nods. "Anyway, that's all the testing - ordinarily I'd grill you on your world's magic, but I hear we're getting copies of some textbooks on it, so I don't have to. So you're free to go if you don't have any other questions."

"Do you know concretely how I go about that, by the way - it'll involve sending my parents a message and getting them to buy the books and then collecting the books and then compensating them safely probably with some local fiction -"

"I imagine Mrs. Carson will send you a note when she's got a specialist who can send the message, and you'll hash out with her what the note should say about when the books should be gathered by and all that. If you want to confirm that you can always drop by Schuster Hall."

"Waiting for a note works for me."

"Fair enough. Mrs. Carson's good about that kind of thing."

"Thanks for everything. I'll go sign up for classes, shall I?"

"Sounds good!" Dr. Duncan waves goodbye.

And she goes to the person who was going to help her sign up for classes.

Ms. Dennon is ready and willing to assist!

Required classes for Bella's first semester are Powers Theory (Powers Lab is, unusually, not automatically highlighted), History Tutoring, Science Tutoring, Word Processing and Technological Literacy, and Basic Martial Arts.

Recommended classes include Introduction to Psychic Disciplines, Introduction to Mystic Arts, Home Economics, World Literature, and Statistics 101.

"Remind me how much course load is recommended?"

"There's eight class periods in the day, but some classes have a Saturday morning option instead."

"- oh, right, this isn't actually a university. Okay." She puts Psychic Disciplines and Intro Mystic Arts and the literature course on the heap.

"No, it really isn't. Winter session is structured a little more loosely, where you choose up to four 'special topics' classes, but that's winter session. Anyway, that's all unless you want a Saturday class, but I imagine you'll have plenty on your plate either way."

"Not my first semester. I imagine I'll want to spend a lot of time on self-study about stuff from home once my books come in - I can probably make some progress even without - and I don't know how the workload here compares to what I'm used to yet and if I do get bored I can always read things."

Ms. Dennon nods. "If you end up thinking it's too much with a full courseload, you can always register that self-study officially and have a free period in your day for it. But if it all fits together, this seems like a very respectable schedule."

"I do like to be busy! But I can't spend all that long experimenting with arcana, I'll hit mana limits."

"Ah, resource limitations. That's why I never got into our kind of magic, it always seemed like a bit too much management for me."

"They have mana limits too? I guess that bodes poorly for science fixing it readily."

"Not mana but essence - as far as I can tell you sort of accumulate essence over time, and you can save away as much as you like but if you want to do magic you're using a bit of it every time."

"Huh, okay. I have a capacity limit but it can improve with practice."

"Well, it sounds like you'll be practicing plenty!"

"Anyway, thanks for registering me - do I get my booklist now -?"

"Yeah, it's on the site. ...and I can print it for you, let me do that." She presses a couple of buttons and a piece of paper emerges from a device next to her. "You can buy or rent the books from the bookstore, or if you don't they'll have copies to hand out on the first day."

"I think my stipend will more than cover it, but it's nice that they have handouts."