The idea just hit me: Ratio’s students are called his ducklings
He’s fully aware of it and makes no move to stop it from spreading around campus.
Being considered one of Ratio’s ducklings is kinda a big deal because those are the students who are willing to put in the effort and work to keep up with Ratio’s teaching style.
They are both terrified of him and respect him so much that all the other students are in turn terrified of them. And while the ducklings don’t get any special treatment from Ratio, there’s something special and comforting about being part of the group of students who are willing to stick with Dr. Ratio’s coursework.
This is how I see it happening:
It started during Ratio’s first few years of teaching. Not his first year because I fully believe his first few classes were really controversial and had a lot of dropouts once his personality and harsh teaching style were made known.
It took a while but after a few years, there’s finally a class with no drop outs, even if it’s super small. However, this class are also the students who are dedicated and truly want to learn and refuse to quit even with Ratio’s standards.
(They still complain and cry of course, the student life is all about pain- no this is not me projecting as a uni student, I’m perfectly sane I promise-)
And of course, like any other student who needs to understand wtf is going on in class, his students do everything in their power to create study groups and attend his office hours, which are 100x scarier in the beginning since that’s prime one-on-one time with Dr. Ratio.
At least in lecture the man is a hundred seats away from you. Here, he’s speaking directly to your face as he explains just how wrong you are and giving advice on how to fix that.
At first, due to how unused to Ratio is from having a class of students who are truly trying to keep up with him (whether they’re succeeding is up to interpretation), he only spends time with them during lecture and office hours for the first few weeks.
Around campus, you begin to see the esteemed Dr. Ratio being followed by a gaggle of students tripping over each other, constantly asking question after question and him answering each one. Even as he’s being blunt, he never looks like he’s trying to outrun them, and even stops occasionally to write in one of the student’s notes.
The ducklings nickname started out as a joke when someone made the connection of his students following him like baby ducks after lectures, and spiraled a bit more when one of the students found one of his rubber ducks in his office.
And so after finals, that first class of students got together for a nice drinking party to celebrate their freedom. A few drinks in of reminiscing about the class and how they’ll actually kinda miss Dr. Ratio, someone made a joke of buying some rubber ducks for the good doctor. Continuing on the high, an entire gaggle of drunk uni students just pull up to a craft store at 3am and start hunting for ducks. Another brilliant student laughs at the idea of personalizing each duck, and the rest of the class find the idea so funny that they buy out an entire aisle of craft supplies and get to work.
The next day, hungover but still committed to the bit, the entire class show up to Ratio’s office and each hand him a personalized rubber duck along with a terrified thank you for the class.
Ratio would give his usual denying spiel of how “it is unnecessary” and “your education is all the reward a professor could want” but this is his first ever class with no dropouts and who all managed to pass their finals.
The man is a failure at not caring, he is crying on the inside.
So he keeps the ducks on a shelf in his office.
Somehow, the duckling nickname just cements itself after that day, and each class afterwards, despite all the pain and grumbling of the students, are always referred to as Ratio’s ducklings because only the truly insane (dedicated) stick it out and follow after him.
And after each final, his little ducklings always give him their own personalized rubber duck that he continues to add to his shelf that he always had within eyesight of his desk.
(the first class of ducklings are his personal favorite, though he’ll never claim to have any)
I’m incapable of not adding Aventurine whenever I talk about Ratio nowadays, I just have to accept that I love them both too much now.
But yea, I like to imagine Aventurine finding out about the ducklings nickname first and teasing Ratio about actually having a heart and caring, which Ratio just denies and tries to justify as him being an attentive professor. But then Aventurine finds the rubber duck shelf and it’s just too sentimental for him to even think about joking.
Adding to my headcanon of Aventurine being really curious about different subjects, I imagine that when he gets comfortable, he constantly asks Ratio questions about anything and everything. Ratio happily replies and teaches him.
I like to think that one day, Aventurine would make his own personalized rubber duck to gift to Ratio as a 'thank you' for always indulging him with his questions and that rubber duck just becomes Ratio’s favorite. He gives it a little podium in his house and office and he constantly carries it around with him. He has photos of the damn thing. His first class find out about the duck and needle him about having ‘no favorites’ which he denies. Aventurine finds it both embarrassing and really cute.
(I’m kinda pulling from my own experience with one of my old professors. She was terrifying but by god did I actually learn during her class. Every one of us would complain for hours about her exams, and boy were the averages terrible, but we were all also deeply committed to attending every office hour and defending her against the other students. It was like ‘She’s a harsh and insane professor, but she’s our harsh and insane professor.’ Everyone knew you were serious if you chose to take her class instead of other professors for the same course, she was that infamous. If I take 5 seconds to psychoanalyze myself without getting depressed, maybe that’s why I really like Ratio - outside of the burnt-out gifted child thing with emotional expression issues that also hit way too close to home. He just really reminds me of one of my own professors that I still really respect to this day)
