Zen immediately distinguished himself as one of the most proactive members of the HM staff by presenting me with a plan to overhaul his department shortly after I became HM. So far he has kept on schedule and developed two courses, Introduction to Fiction Writing (originally published as Writing Studies) and Combat Writing. Between them, this involved writing just shy of 4000 words of course notes as well as developing exams and extensive answer keys. I have received numerous comments from the membership at large commenting on the improvement in quality between Zen's Introduction to Fiction Writing and the course that it replaced.

Additionally, Zen has authored two reports that function as mini-courses in writing, including one on filter words and another on Glenn Gers' story planning technique. This is especially appreciated given how easily forgotten the SA can be when faculty focus exclusively on grading courses instead of promoting their departments and subject areas.

Since his last recognition, Zen has graded 42 exams with an average turnaround of 11 hours. This includes 10 submissions to the Test of Wisdom, the most time-consuming course in the SA to grade. In these instances, Zen gives extensive, actionable feedback to member-written fiction and then reevaluates the piece after the member makes revisions. This is essentially a private writing clinic available to any DB member on their own time and one of the best contributions the SA can make to improving a member's writing skills.

I'm delighted to have him on staff and look forward to his continued innovations in the Department of Writing.

Alethia Archenksova
Headmistress

Zen jumped onto Voice Staff with much gusto, something I remain eternally grateful for. With our continued backlog of projects. Zen remains a driving voice in ensuring all of #TeamVoice continues to push forward in its many duties for this club. It is thanks to his help, several major projects have gotten completed, along side others still in progress.

In terms of general Voice Duties, Zen has been a helpful eye on all of our queues, and involved on the discussions for the many sheets that come through. For sheet reviews, he has processed 93 sheets for approval (~13% of all manual sheet approvals in this time) along side some 22 remands. He is also active on discussion threads even when the sheet isn't one he is maining for processing. His reviews also come in handy with the competition queue, verifying those word counts, and upon occasion helping process Role Playing clusters from discord.

His main strengths however remain in the realm of project work. Thanks to his efforts we were finally able to fill out the feats projects, and review all 463 active feats in our system. His efforts helped cut weeks of time it would have taken for me to do it alone.

His second major venture was the refresh of all of our club’s non-member NPC characters. This included reviewing old fiction for those deceased in the narrative, ensuring they each had proper and expected owners in our system (be it factions, clans, or voice staff owned for things like SA training). He also went and reviewed them for invalid sheets, helping ensure all of these NPCs were up to snuff with the current set of available options. This covers 201 faction/voice-owned sheets along with all of the Clan owned sheets.

While there are still many things still being worked on, Zen’s efforts on Voice Staff has not gone unnoticed or unappreciated. He has truly helped improve the fiction related activities for this club, and has been a massive aid to my own sanity.

Congrats Zen, and thank you for your continued efforts!

The nicest thing Ciara did for me was leave an excellent staff in place, with Zentru'la as one of the highlights. Although I have only worked with him for a month or so, Zen is already a model of the direction I want to take the Shadow Academy. He does his baseline professor job, grading 14 courses since his last recognition, but he also leaves the SA to take his subject area to the members. Zen is the only SA staff to issue reports, which cover writing advice and best practices, and the only one to run competitions for his subject area. He genuinely cares about writing in this club and is proactive about raising both the quality and quantity of it, as attested by his Voice work. Although I'm afraid I don't have much to contribute to an award just yet, I look forward to many more recommendations to come.

Alethia Archenksova
Headmistress