From the Student Handbook: My Name Is Professor
My name is Professor. It is also my species. We—the rest of the faculty and original staff here—number about two hundred. There have been a few accidents, some mergers and fissions....
My name is Professor. It is also my species.
We—the rest of the faculty and original staff here—number about two hundred. There have been a few accidents, some mergers and fissions, some retirements and additions. On the whole the number stays about the same. On the whole we are very, very old. On the whole we outnumber the ten of you twenty to one.
We all teach. All of our names are Professor. All of us are Professor. Any rumor you may hear to the contrary is irrelevant. Every story regarding our origins has been distorted, filtered through ignorant superstitions. You will learn some of the truth when we cover Actual History as a subject. Even then the truth will be irrelevant. Unless and until you somehow become a peer, we shall all remain Professor.
—
The following was detailed in your student contracts, but I will restate it now to attempt to drive home how important hard work and concentration will be to your academic survival.
The full academic program will take around ten years to complete. Each of you will attempt to master every field of study that we offer. Most of you will fail. If three of you do not succeed, we will obtain more candidates and keep trying until we have three who have passed all courses. Each of you have alternates who will be brought in if you succumb to your mistakes, malfeasance, or disciplinary actions during your studies.
If more than three of you pass all exams, there will be competitive ordeals to eliminate any extras. There will be three, and only three, one way or another.
Anyone who fails, and anyone who is eliminated, will be disassembled and repurposed, piecemeal, according to your strengths and weaknesses. This eventuality is part of your contract. Be assured that some of the aging staff will be grateful for the contribution of your various parts.
The remaining three candidates will compete again. The winner will remain with us to head up research and assist with the drudgeries of administration and updating the curriculum design throughout the next cycle. The winner may also be taught a number of things beyond the typical curriculum at our discretion.
The two others will be repaired and released to go back out into the world to apply what they have learned. They will teach others if they wish, teach anything they wish, and identify potential candidates for the next cycle. They will conduct observations and field research. They will test what they have been taught and make note of errors and inconsistencies. In order to ensure they cooperate with one another, when either of those two is damaged (by accident or entropy or violence) beyond the ability of self-repair and is unable to continue, or when either simply decides to retire, they will both be collected and any extra knowledge they have gained will be extracted and added to the curriculum along with the in-house research conducted by the valedictorian.
This post-graduation process may take hundreds of years as graduates tend to endure for a very long time if they wish. But when the process of knowledge integration is complete, the two travelers will be permanently integrated into the staff and faculty, replacing any other staff or faculty that have been decommissioned due to attrition, and the valedictorian will be allowed to depart to any desired location with all obligations fulfilled.
Yes, children. There is eventually an actual winner. There have been fifty-one so far. More than a few have chosen oblivion, however, as their destination. Go figure.
The complete cycle can take as little as a couple dozen years or as long as several hundred. Once or twice it has lasted a thousand years or more. We average around four cycles per millennium.
This is the fifty-second cycle since the founding of the First University in the First City.
Your primary goal is simply to understand. Your secondary goal is to be able to communicate your understanding effectively via the techniques that we shall attempt to teach you or other techniques that you may discover on your own that enable you to convince us that you have mastered the subjects. It is unlikely that you will find the time or energy to pursue any other goals without impacting your progress toward these two.
This will be your only warning on this score: should you take any action that results in us needing to haul in a candidate to replace one of your peers, you will be punished. We will assign a forfeit. You will not like it. Anything that causes extra work or aggravation beyond the already substantial effort and tedium of teaching you and evaluating your knowledge and skills will be punished. Do not expect mercy or indulgence or even such niceties as fairness, proportionality, or consistency. We just can’t be bothered. Therefore we rely on your terror to keep our workload to a minimum. Do your best to cooperate, or else.
If you can spare the attention, watch one another. It is far cheaper to learn from another’s mistakes than it is to learn from your own.
This matter is closed.