Determination

(Wilhelm Dragonsong)

I know how it may seem to others, but I didn’t really go to much trouble planning and setting up the test. Mainly because in the past, during my spare time, I thought up the majority of what I would now use as ‘test’ material out of fun/boredom, and no real other reason besides curiosity.

As the ‘spare time’ I am referring to goes further back then when I first came to this world, and as I am basically for all intents and purposes an immortal being, as you’d probably quite easily guess, I have had not a little amount of what one could refer to as spare time.

Even so, though I did not go to any trouble it is not like I didn’t put any thought or care into it at all. In the end isn’t Vanessa my precious first apprentice?

I had to customize various elements of what foundationally where just games and amusements to pass the time and transform them into a set of tools with somewhat more important serious purposes that would also suit my apprentice enough that it would measure what I want measured accurately.

And…oh…

…

…I just now had to have this well... ‘point’ pointed out to me by a friend, but just to put those of you with dirty minds to rest, what I meant by measurements has nothing to do with her physical appearance, or other more intimate details about her.

In my opinion to care about people who are twisted enough to corrupt my innocent words into something quite…well twisted is somewhat meaningless, in and of itself… but as my friend insisted I gave in and decided to say this now, and by the way why would you even need to use a test to measure that? I mean can’t one just tell most everything from using the eyeballs?

I mean just in case of emergencies I have already made her several sets of clothing including formal wear and they should all fit perfectly, I after all used the main three sizes to calculate by law of human proportion the rest of the sizes and…

‘’cough, cough” anyway let me get back to the much more valid and interesting subject of talking about my tests that I oh so carefully crafted, as well as some of the real reasons behind them.

The first part of the test was to determine determination.

Before I go further let us discus: What is determination? Though there are probably as many answers as there are people, let me give you my definition. To me determination is a somewhat specific type of mindset, one in which after deciding on a course or way of future action you stick to that path and do not change.

Of course depending on the situation one is in as well as various events in one’s life, you could say that anyone could be determined so long as certain requirements are met, and anyone could be…well not so determined so long as one or more of those usually unsaid requirements are not met.

However what I wanted to test, was not the situational determination, but rather my student’s leanings towards the amount of determination they would have and how easy it would generally be for them to ‘meet’ their requirements as it were.

In other words I wanted to test how stubborn Vanessa was basically I wanted at least a hint of how easy would it be for her to get fixated.

In many situations having a lot of determination can usually be a good thing. If a challenge or problem is something that would probably require more than one attempt it can even be something that is absolutely required in order to make finding a solution likely.

However determination has it’s downsides as well, for if you become too fixated and stuck on the problem your mind will usually become too inflexible to ever be able to willingly set the problem aside or give up if needed let alone find the answer, especially if that answer requires out of the box thinking, for determination is usually a factor during the times that a person not only stays in the box but decides to live there.

Bad or good determination was a quality that in my opinion would be vital when it came to my future interactions and lessons with my new pupil.

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Now when it comes to determination there are actually very many ways to test for it. For example the ol’ make your apprentice attempt to fill a large cistern with water from a well or river using only a bucket filled with holes trick.

But having experienced that ‘trick’ myself I feel that for the majority of people including myself it is something that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Trust me, for some it is so mentally scarring that it and it’s relatives of other near or absolutely impossible tasks can drive deep wedges between teacher and students in the form of eternal grudges without any possibility of forgiveness. (Even if the disciple continues the apprenticeship).

That alone was reason enough in my mind not to do it, though actually there were many others. Afterall I was hoping for a decent amount of time for our master apprenticeship relationship so there wasn’t really a need to rush things.

Having just a hint of her personality was really enough, really specific knowledge wasn’t something I would learn until at least years of knowing her anyway.

In any event I was quite satisfied for the test I had chosen specifically for this part of the…well…test. As you can see despite my seemingly vast knowledge it doesn’t preclude me to having trouble choosing words sometimes…where was I…oh yes so I was quite satisfied with the test I had.

Basically in the location I had sent Vanessa after the ceremony I had placed a nest or network of spells that upon her arrival would use her surroundings to trigger the creation of a pocket dimension.

Rather than the dimension being a somewhat small space with a beginning and an end, I made it so that the space of the dimension would loop in on itself, essentially despite having a limited amount of space for all intents and purposes the space was endless.

What I expected to happen would be that finding herself in such a situation and being from what I know of her an active sort of person, she would start walking hoping to get someplace. But since the end of that place was the beginning of the place she would end up going no place, make sense?

First of all, though it wasn’t the main point of the test, it would still somewhat test her awareness along with her determination. If one is aware of ones reality even if one is determined one won’t usually continue to do something pointless right?

However the awareness part was not the main part because it was designed to trigger the behavior of determination in people, at least for a short while in the beginning and the traits and personality of the person taking the test would determine the rest.

What I did was have the location be in a clearing with a lot of sunlight in the middle and the shade of trees on the ‘sides’. There was a minor charm to make a person want to avoid the sunlight and stick to the shade. Encouraging a person to stick to the shade had several benefits.

First of all, one tends to usually become tired faster in the sunlight, and making the person give up a little sooner because of that sort of reason wasn’t really a valid result. Second and finally the gloomy and changing nature of the shade would also somewhat help in the deception that there is no true movement happening, as well as make the clearing seem bigger than it was.

When I ported myself to the observation point I had set up just outside my little pocket dimension I was somewhat surprised to see my apprentice still walking in the loop. She was a bit more determined then I had thought.

However having timed her from the moment she had been ported there to the time she had found the somewhat apologetic message I had left for her, I could say that while she definitely could be considered stubborn it wasn’t to the point that I would call it a major or crippling fault.

Also part and parcel of being stubborn was also usually accompanied with another virtue that just so happened to be the next part of my little test, that of patience.