After some discussion with the other department heads and their faculty over the course of a month, we've settled on a number of different ways that students can reach their graduation department, with some variation between different departments as to what can or cannot count. For example, within dwarven studies there are a number of pathways to meeting the requirement. Some students have already met the requirement, having gone on the expedition with the ancient dwarven studies professor, having contributed to the discovery. A certain number of tutoring positions will be allowed a semester for last-year students that show reasonable ability in certain lower level classes, and taking that role will also fulfill the requirement.

Those are in addition to things like helping in translation of rare works, creating an original thesis on a particular field of study, or compiling some other meaningful information within their field. All of these types of works will also have to be reviewed and approved by a faculty member to ensure quality. To ensure that gatekeeping without reason doesn't happen, we will also have randomized secondary reviews of submissions to ensure fairness.

Within engineering, in addition to tutoring positions, we'll also be counting meaningful contributions to infrastructure on the island, which can include the drafting for buildings or other infrastructure without actually doing any of the physical work. We've also included data collection as a method that can count. There is, after all, a lot of data that we could use on all number of things from proper soil conditions for some plants to the maximum weight certain stone columns can carry that we would benefit greatly from having. This is especially useful for students who are worse performing, as they really only need to spend the time setting up the same experiment over and over, and recording data.

A similar situation is occurring in the mathematics and sciences departments, where there is a lot of data and tables that can be made that benefit the academy long term. For all data collection, across any department, we can't have faculty spend all their time verifying every table and chart that gets made, so instead we've opted to go with a system where collected data, when possible, has to be verified by other students a handful of times before it's fully considered accurate. All contributing students names, over however many years, will be put on the final documents in our archive.

In extenuating circumstances, other work might also qualify, but that will be determined on a case by case basis. We've left ourselves open to the possibility that there may be methods we haven't thought of, or students who may need easier work for one reason or another. The main students of concern are actually nobles, who often have special circumstances that we can't really refuse.

With the requirements figured out, we've decided to distribute them to the students they are applicable to in the next week so that they can begin planning out their last year here. At the start of next year, this information will be provided to all students, but given the circumstances we wanted to give the most applicable class a head start.

Of the handful of students that are entering their final year, 14 of the 23 already have their requirement completed thanks to having done something that qualified them previously. That makes this upcoming year very easy to ensure that they all finish their time at the academy. By comparison, the students who have two years left that need to have requirements done is much larger, with a much smaller percentage having already done something to meet the requirement. Of course, its much harder to have completed the requirement when you haven't been here as long or taken the harder classes, so it's not something to be too concerned with, just an observation that we'll have a lot of students that need to do some form of extracurricular contribution.

It is quite nice that we will finally have our first graduates in a year, even if that number is exceedingly small. There has been enough progress in a few of the clubs that I'm going to oversee a few internships over the winter break related to those clubs' work. I don't want to completely step on the club's toes, so the work is peripheral to each club's activities, such that the knowledge that the individuals learn and work on will not only benefit the academy or Kembora, but also will directly help them with understanding an aspect of their club activity.

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For example, with the self-propelled wagon club, the internships I'm looking for participants from have to do with doing analysis of suspension spring behaviors on different types of terrain. This will obviously help benefit the club, but also has applications for new models of tanks. Within tool optimization, I'm similarly looking for some analysis on different metal alloy properties given specific ratios of different metals.

There are a lot of interesting internships going on across all the departments, which is a very nice improvement over previous years. The astronomy instructor got permission to have a demon and a dwarf go to Kembora to use the telescope to make observations. I've started discussion with them about the construction of a much larger telescope up on Kembora's peak. Drazvok's peak sits a few thousand feet lower than Kembora's, which makes it suboptimal for installing a large telescope. There also isn't a great path to the peak from inside the mountain unlike Kembora. Given the fact that both islands have eagles on them, that can make things a bit tricky. The hiking club already has to take precautions when travelling above a certain altitude, so it would take decades of work to actually make Drazvok's peak as useful as Kembora's.

The process to design and build a larger telescope will be quite difficult, since a lot of engineering will have to be done. We'll have to make a large reflector telescope, which will require some developments in casting technology to cast parabolic mirrors. There is quite a bit of overlap between engineering and astronomy in that regard. So during the next semester, we've agreed to set aside some time to determine what sort of internships we'd want to begin the process for designing parabolic mirror casting.

I know that casting it in a spinning apparatus is the best method, so I can already give some guidance in that regard. From there though, similar to the internships I have for this semester, I can simply set some students up repeating dozens, if not hundreds, of experiments to determine the parameters involved in the process. There is a lot of data to collect on rotational speed, size, and parabolic focal points that I'd want to know to better optimize the production process. Even relatively small reflector telescopes would have just as much magnification as our large telescope, but in a fraction of the size.

After I finished that discussion, I had the realization that we're finally at the point where I've started being able to farm out a lot of the data collection and design work for technology to other individuals, which was one of the main goals of the academy. There is a long way to go, since it's only farming out work in existing fields of study, and not expanding work to new areas of study such as chemistry, but its a step in the right direction.

It was nice being able to actually spend the break working on tasks that I'd previously been too busy to enjoy. At the start of the break, most of my time was occupied by ensuring that the students working on my internship projects had all the experiments set up correctly and knew what they were doing. After that though, I was able to take the occasional trip back to Kembora to observe things directly and see how progress was going on various fronts. I'd get glimpses of parts when I would go back to do minister meetings, but I was actually free to explore some now.

The dwarves on the island are really doing a number on the mountain, as far as mining is concerned. Since mountains are conical, every time they've gone up a floor in their mine layout, they mine it out significantly faster than the previous one. At this point, they'll have dug all the exploratory shafts from the mine start to the top in another year at most. There haven't been any fluorite discoveries outside of the one they found quite a few years ago either, which could be a problem. The size and quality of ore deposits higher up have been decreasing in general, which I shouldn't be too surprised about. While there were a few quality deposits we found back when we were mining the cave area, none of them were really particularly large compared to the deposits we eventually found lower down.

Speaking of the old cave, they breached it from the inside. It had been long since abandoned ever since I moved the last of the technology out of it and destroyed the remnants of the machines inside to ensure that it wouldn't be spied upon. It left an impression on me never-the-less that the area I spent decades at had finally been reached and changed by our civilizational growth. I went up to visit it through the mine, rather than along the surface. The inside was largely as I remembered it, save for the new mine shaft entering it, but the outside was heavily overgrown and some of the stone buildings and areas I'd designed had collapsed. I sat there for a while before I went back via the old stone path we'd built.

The upper part of that path was barely recognizable, again being overgrown and covered in debris from mudslides that that had never been cleared. However, it wasn't long before I reached one of the villages we'd set up for farming, just a bit below the border for eagle territory. From there, the path was well maintained back to Kembora City. All in all, my break had far more nostalgia in it than I expected.

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