Something Completely Different: Class Schedules

[gwendolyngrace]

No: HPFGUIDX 36762

Hi, folks.

Call me obsessive.

Actually, call me bored.

I embarked on a truly insane journey this week.

I decided to put together a sample "master schedule" of Hogwarts
classes. We've discussed in various threads the type of schedule that
kids have. Some of the discussion has been an attempt to determine
whether one could run the school with only one professor for each area
(i.e., one Transfiguration teacher for the school, one potions prof,
etc.). Some of the discussion focused on whether the kids take any
core classes such as English, Math, and Literature. Still other parts
of the discussion asked questions of a cultural nature, such as
whether there is any music or art education.

Well, I tried to pull all this together to figure out how the class
schedule might look.

I started by figuring out the number of classes each professor had to
teach. I took into account things like Double Herbology, where the
kids were paired with another house of their year and the class seemed
to be twice the normal length, and Double Divination, where although
the class was twice the length, Gryffindors seemed to attend it alone.

Once I knew how many classes (and in what units) they occurred, I
began to fill in my schedules. I can post the document to the files
section, but it's a bit difficult to follow.

The long and short of my results are that it is *just* possible to
schedule the required number of classes for one professor, provided
the professors don't mind only having one hour free most days
(including lunch), and only 2 or 3 free periods outside of the lunch
hour. That doesn't seem very likely, since most teachers don't
constantly teach every day.

However, it doesn't work in Divination, unless the 4th year is the
only year when it is double the length, or unless there are years
where houses are combined (such as the same year as Harry, but
Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff take it together).

In all core subjects, it's also only possible if the kids only take
each class once per week. A MWF and TTh schedule would require at
least one other teacher per subject, probably 2.

However, the class schedule as it stands has some interesting
properties. Allowing only one class per subject per house/year per
week, the kids have a maximum of 12 classes per week--and we know that
that's impossible, because in PoA, when Hermione signs up for
everything, she has classes that conflict.

Owing to the way I filled in at random, but making sure there were no
cases where the same house/year had two classes at once, some days are
completely empty, while others are very full, but that could be
portioned out better by someone with more time and energy and interest
than I had. But on the whole, on average, what I wound up with were
schedules that were very lightly populated. If only 12-14 hours are
taken up by curriculum, plus 5 lunches, there are many unaccounted
hours left.

Now, there's also Astronomy, which is held at night, so there may be a
reason to leave a class's schedule open on the morning following that
class. But even allowing that a class meeting at midnight would not
have a 9:00 the next morning, there are large gaps.

Might it be possible that these gaps (becuase they're not taking more
than two periods of a subject per week) be due to the liberal arts
curriculum?

It's either that, or the kids have no excuse to need the library at night.

Gotta go. Please discuss amongst yourselves. I hope I've explained
this clearly enough.

Gwen