I was here from the very start (I was also aware of the previous project How to be a hero, but I came too late for that) – I even finished most of the assignments before you started to award us with stars. But maybe I just didn’t deserve any;)

Since I finished most of the assignments quickly (and that’s because I found them most pleasing), I didn’t have much to do afterwards and peeked here only ocassionaly to see if there’s something new, maybe to type something on forum or comment some of the blog articles.

I think I was quite succesfull with “spreading the word” – my sister took the test twice and in the end she pursued the career of a Rogue. When she struggled, she came to me and I fed her with stories that she reworked as her assignments. She also managed to talk my dad into this project and he pursued the career of a Paladin (but since he doesn’t speak much English, in the end it was I who had to translate painstakingly his texts). I even managed to “enlighten” my one time date, who then became the Wizard, accompanied by her classmates. Not to mention my girlfriend who went as far as to read every single assignment that I penned.

I just wanted to say: Thank you. Thank you for your games and for your projects. You are wonderful.

I am one of the 74 heroes who made it past level one, but I am so just barely. I want to describe my experience so that you can see what it is that hindered me, and what it was that kept me here. I’ll start at the beginning, and when I reach the end, I will reflect a little, then stop.

A bit of context: When I joined the school for heroes, I was a young woman of about 19 or 20, I believe. I was in college, and I had just started down a rather perilous but hopeful path: I had decided to pursue a career in academia, hoping to learn insights about a field that I didn’t know yet existed that I hoped would help me change the world for the better. I was younger, full of idealism, and it was a time to take risks.

When I saw your site, I was excited, in large part because of what the original Quest for Glory games meant to me as a child. But another large part of it was that the site promised to show a path towards exactly what I wanted to become: a real hero. Maybe a small hero, but a real one, someone who lived fully and pursued their ideals.

I took the test honestly, and it told me I was a wizard… or maybe a paladin. I didn’t like either of those, because all my life my teachers have been telling me what a good and smart girl I was, and while I appreciated that, I knew that what I needed to learn was something different. I needed to learn how to survive outside the world where ideas and intentions were all that mattered. I needed to liberate myself from that. So I took the test again and lied, aiming for Rogue. I got in, and I got started.

I thought about the first assignment a great deal before submitting. I have never been one for breaking rules intentionally; most of the time, I just accidentally bumble into breaking one, and I get away with it because everyone knows my intentions were good. I was sick of that. Wasn’t there anything in this world that I genuinely wanted to change, regardless of the world’s boundaries or my own? When I found my answer, I found it was something I had already done: how convenient. So I just submitted that, and got in. I am not certain I would have happened if the instructor had given me a redo and resubmit; I likely would have been disheartened. It’s also possible I would have tried harder, and actually done something new. But I don’t think so. There’s a time and a place for everything, and only in some instances is that time ‘anytime.’

Once in, I began the ‘What is a Rogue’ mission with inspiration. I simply poured onto the page all those things that I truly hoped to be. My vision seemed to match the instructor’s, and I got a key from it, which heartened me. He told me he wouldn’t be as easily impressed in the future, and, eager to impress as always, I took it to heart.

Too much to heart. It took me years to complete the rest of the assignments, which really, I just should have /done./ I must have written at least three versions of the spider essay over the years, and I finished the actual recruitment assignment years before I submitted it because I was scheming up a better plot that I didn’t actually have the resources for… or at least, that I didn’t want to spend them on, being busy pursuing my career. Although the plan was a playful experience, implementing it would have become work. I wonder if collaborating with my fellow rogues might have lightened the burden to the point where it could have actually happened.

In the end, though, what got me to that second level was the idea that things actually had to get done whether they WERE done or not. I think that’s what got Marsdriver so far: he is an achiever to the end, remarkably ambitious.

My final spider test reflected that realization: that in the end, things need to get done, and it doesn’t matter how. Perfect doesn’t matter. Ideal doesn’t matter. Done matters.

I reached that point not through my experiences in the school, but through my experiences in actual life. When I hit my limits in Grad school, I had to finish to survive. That’s what taught me. I believe the Rogue school made me fearless in pursuing my interests, but it didn’t teach me the practical skills I needed to succeed. Falling down hard on my ass in the real world did. I don’t know if that experience can be implemented into play.

I wonder what would have happened if I had taken the wizard, paladin, or warrior route. I have no regrets, and will miss the school while it’s gone, even if I didn’t often visit after achieving rathood… I liked knowing it was there. That there were others. I never talked to those others enough, either. I would have liked some group projects, I think. Being forced to do things teaches me how to do them best.

Thank you very much for making the school, and good luck in creating the next one; I look forward to it. I hope what I’ve said here has helped. The school certainly helped me think about the experiences that I was going through at the time, and while I’m not sure it taught me what I needed to know, it did help me frame the experience and create meaning out of what happened to me in a way that is extremely meaningfully to me (and, yes, fun. )

If you’re a gamer who wonders if he could be heroic outside of the game world.. Then keep an eye on the school for heroes, as it is sure to be great vehicle to make that transformation happen.

I can’t wait to see what the Coles have been up to!

Foundation
Foundation and Empire
Second Foundation
Foundation’s Edge
Foundation and Earth

I loved the first three. I think he butchered the story in the last two, Robots and Foundation timelines should never have merged and the whole Galaxia decision felt like a bad idea to me, too borg-ish. So after that I never got around to Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation, which were actually written last.

By reading Ayn Rand’s books in the order she wrote them, you can perhaps get a better understanding of how she developed her philosophy over time. I admit that I started reading Atlas Shrugged 3 or 4 times, and each time stopped around page 50, finding it too slow and pedantic. The 4th time (+/-), I kept reading and got totally hooked within the next 50 pages. I ended up reading until dawn, called in sick to work, got a few hours sleep, and finished it that day.

For our younger (8th grade up through College) readers, the Ayn Rand Institute sponsors an annual essay contest on each of the three novels – Anthem, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged – for three age brackets. You can find more information about these at Ayn Rand Essay Contests. Writing such an essay on any topic is a valuable exercise in structured writing, and these give you a chance to win some useful scholarship money.