The interesting thing that happens when you play tabletop role play games is that it allows you to explore ideas that you might not think about when watching a movie or reading a book. Sometimes, you discover things about yourself, about where your limits are since it gives you a safe space to explore. Other times, it makes you think seriously about the real world by contextualizing it with fantasy analogs. One great example is the analog between fantasy wizard school and real world high school.
In the world of Chimera, the arcane prep schools teach students between ages of 14-18, preparing them for arcane universities full of research and study into the magical arts. One of the traditions of these schools is that second year students need to choose a school of magic to specialize in, so that they can start attending magic specific classes for the thing they want to specialize in.
For those who are not in the know, Chimera is a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, and making a student choose a school of magic was a narrative way to allow players to take a second level in Wizard and choose a school of magic. It was originally not meant to be anything more than a plot device.
However, @wereah pointed out to me that 15 years of age was quite young to expect a young person to know what they wanted to do with their life. This was a fair thing to say, after all. In the world of Dungeons and Dragons, choosing your school of magic will determine what special skills your wizard will have, what they can learn quickly and influence them as a person. Choosing your school of magic is like making someone choose what career they are going to be for the rest of their lives.
In both Canada and the US, 9th graders are between the ages of 14-15. While I do not know what the US high school system with the intention of entering college/university is like, I do know what it is like for Canadians. In Canada, your acceptance to a college/university is heavily dependent on your final overall GPA of the top six university level high school courses (or advanced course if you graduated before 2005). On top of this, depending on your chosen field, the college/university may require certain courses to be included in that top six.
For example, because I was trying to be a good child and become a computer programmer, I needed to have physics, calculus and algebra as part of my top six.
When I finally took the plunge to go into literature instead, I needed ‘English’ and two humanities to get into my chosen university. Because I didn’t decide to commit to literature until my fifth year of high school (I was the last of a Grade 13 batch), I had to stay an extra year to take my two humanities courses to get into the university of my choice.
And the important takeaway from this is, in order to get into a university of your choice and into a field you like, you need to by second year high school know what you want to be in order to take the courses needed to get into the university and field you want.
Assuming you even knew what field you wanted to go into.
It was a moment of weird clarity to turn to @wereah and tell her, yea that is way too young to expect anyone to know what they want to do with their life. But… it was not unrealistic that this would be forced on those arcane students, because we were 15 years old when we had to make the choice for our future. It doesn’t make it right, and it’s probably a sign that our educational system is in desperate need of quality of life upgrades.
