Dark greetings from your favorite Headmistress!

We have a bit to cover in this report, so settle in and prepare to learn of the remarkable deeds of our students, coming course updates that may require your immediate attention, Shadow Academy-hosted monthly trivia events and the open professor position!

Quick Links

• Student Highlights
  
  • Decathlon Winners
    
  • Constructing DJKS
    
  • Exam Highlights
    
  • Sage Degrees
    
• Course Update Prep
  
• Monthly Trivia
  
• Hiring
  

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Student Highlights

Since I didn’t get to brag on anyone yet this year, I’m looking back through January at the members who stood out in various ways, either to myself or the academy’s faculty and staff.

Decathlon Winners

By sheer quantity of exams, our decathlon winners for January and February represent those members who decided to put our professors to work – with one particularly persistent member going above and beyond.

January Decathlon Winners

• 1st Place: Knight Cello
  
• 2nd Place: Knight Sinya Ani
  
• 3rd Place: Seer Revak Kur
  

February Decathlon Winners

• 1st Place: Neophyte Rash Atan
  
• 2nd Place: Adept Benevolent Taldrya Whiner
  
• 3rd Place: Knight Sinya Ani
  

All-The-Exams

That first place finisher in January is Cello. He’s not a new member, per se, though he did just return to activity recently – and by activity I mean taking nearly every Shadow Academy exam he could get his hands on. Since January, he’s completed 72 exams and gained 14 degrees (and, really, he did most of that in January alone). I believe he’s now taken almost every active exam, with the single exception of Leadership Proposals. But he’s not just a completionist, he’s a perfectionist that persisted until he achieved a 100 percent grade average!

Congrats on all your hard work, Cello.

Constructing Additional DJKs

Notice that Knight Sinya in the decathlon leaderboard? Well, she wasn’t a Knight when she first placed in those competitions, but she is now, and she’s full of wisdom that’s wholesome enough to confound a Grand Master. ;)

Sinya is one of a handful of new members who joined us in late December and stood out immediately for their activity and engagement with the club. Since then, three of them have already been constructed/inspired into DJKs (/JM4s)!

The Shadow Academy is only a small part of that journey, but I love to see new members who come through the academy use it as a springboard to really get connected with the club in the way that these members have to achieve these promotions so quickly. These members are not just completing exams in their first few months, but writing, gaming, creating and even jumping into the ACC! Their units can speak better to their accomplishments, so I’d encourage you to click on their names below to read their promotion events and celebrate with them. :)

Knight Sinya Ani of Clan Plagueis
Knight Ellac Conrat of Clan Scholae Palatinae
Knight Kah’ri Marru of Clan Scholae Palatinae

In addition to the three who joined in late December and hit Knight at top-speed, two other members also hit this JM4 milestone rank in February and March – Professional Zuza Lottson of Arcona, who joined us in October, and Knight Kaled Atros of Arcona, who is an older member who just returned to activity in October.

Congrats to all of you! I can’t wait to see where you’ll go from here. :)

Exam Highlights

I’m always asking our Professors to let me know when they see exams or students come through their departments that really stand out. The two names that came up since my last report were Yeoman Daven Skyfe and Seer Tali Sroka.

Daven’s name came up in early January when our Professor of Lore, Sang, noticed the consistent high quality of his exam answers, including an “essay” on their favorite Star Wars media (movies, books, series, comics, etc) covering the events before the Clone Wars in Galactic History 102.

More recently, Tali has been tearing through exams in both quantity and quality. Several professors mentioned her name, citing excellence as well as humor that made it enjoyable to grade her exams. One such example cited by our Legends professor, Aldaric, was her response to a question in Legends Galactic History 108 asking for a brief description of the Battle of Ebaq 9. Her response came in verse form:

On the moon of Ebaq 9
The Republic turned the tide
Ackbar laid a trap
And just like that
Lah was outdone by his pride

Against the Overlord's wishes
Lah wanted to punish these bishes
And with half the Vong fleet
Flew them straight to defeat
Thanks to Ackbar he sleeps with the fishes

Sage Degrees

But, wait, there’s more! This month, we had three people earn Dark Sage degrees. While one of the Sage degrees requires only a large amount of courses, most of them also require a good deal of activity that takes some time to earn and should be commended.

• Tali earned the Dark Sage of History & Lore, which requires essentially every course in the Lore and Legends departments. Along the way, she also helped report errors that will improve courses for future students, so congrats and thank you to Tali!

• Commander Von Ricmore earned the Dark Sage of Warfare, which requires not only the Warfare Savant, but the Advanced Warfare course, GMRG Society Rank X and 3,620 “warfare points” (earned from gaming clusters, pendants and placements in gaming competitions). Von is one of only 40 members who have earned this degree.

• Savant Sera Kaern earned the Dark Sage of Tactics, which requires not only the Tactics Savant, but INQ Society Rank X and 3,000 “tactical points” (earned from Clusters of Ice, ACC battles and placement in fiction competitions). Sera is one of only 21 members to have earned this degree!

Course Update Prep

We’re always busy working on course updates and new courses … and we now have two existing courses that are ready to be updated: Land Vehicles and Regions of the Galaxy.

Because these updates are rather extensive and will change the exam questions, we’re not updating right away because we want to first give members the chance to complete any saved exams. So, if you started one of these exams and saved it to finish later, please complete it by next weekend.

When we update the courses, saved exams will be deleted and you will have to start over and take the updated course and exam. If you’ve already passed the course, nothing will change.

Announcing: Monthly Trivia!

In its capacity as a store of knowledge for all things Star Wars and DJB, the Shadow Academy is going to begin hosting monthly trivia nights in the DB General Chat on Telegram. Our beloved Manda– uh ... Magistrate Appius Wight is taking the lead on this project and will be hosting the first event on Sunday, March 28th (stay tuned for more details on the timing).

We’ll switch topics each month within the realm of Star Wars and/or club trivia, and we’ll try to give everyone a heads up on that topic so you can prepare in advance, if you’re so inclined. This month’s topic will be: Grand Masters of the DJB.

Since this event will be hosted on Telegram, make sure you join us there if you haven’t already. The desktop or mobile version of the app will be needed for the trivia competition. If you need help getting started on Telegram, take a look at the Shadow Academy course and then head to the chats page to find the links to join us.

Hiring

Finally, we are opening applications for the Professor of our Department of Leadership, Law & Communication following the resignation of Pravus, who served in the role for over three years.

This is a position that grades courses with more open-ended exams on topics ranging from creating competitions to writing markdown and wiki code, so you’ll want to have taken those courses yourself and have a good understanding of the topics currently covered in the courses so that you’ll be able to grade those courses accurately and efficiently. The Shadow Academy expects a 24-hour turnaround time on most courses, so make sure you’d be able to do that and/or communicate that you’ll need help (which is totally acceptable!) in a timely manner.

As I mentioned in my year in review report, the Leadership Department is a priority project for the Shadow Academy. Many of its courses are in need of revision and overall rethinking, so I’m also going to be looking for an applicant who has some ideas in that department as well as relatively recent experience in leadership to help us make informed choices on content that would be truly helpful to aspiring and developing leaders.

I’m going to use the handy-dandy Google form to receive applications again, but be warned that the questions are fairly open-ended this time, so be prepared to write. Applications will be open for two weeks, closing on April 3.

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