Appeal

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Name: Silyara
Age: 20-something
House you were sorted into: Ravenclaw
Link to original application: Link
Are there any questions you would like to elaborate on? I will elaborate on the Mirror of Erised below, as it is asked again.

Besides the specific questions below, I would like to elaborate on the application as a whole. Applications, I have discovered, tend to make some of my characters more obvious than others. I have claw tendencies yes, but they are not nearly as abundant and dominant as application processes usually presents them to be. In my desire to be thorough, the Ravenclaw comes out. Further, some of my other traits I worry about, because I feel like if I present them it will seem like pushing or would be biased on my part. And thus I sometimes hide them in an effort to be unbiased, but instead that only pushes the application towards what is more obvious - my claw tendencies. I have struggled, even in answering these questions, with these issues.

What do I look for in a friend? – Some elaboration. Although I did say that my strongest friendships are not ones I particularly sought or realized at the beginning, that beginning is not enough for someone to have become good friends with me. The friendship has to be tested. A fair weather friend is no true friend. Such testing can come in a number of ways. There is the test of external pressure – some situation that happens during which the person proves him/herself a good friend, or the friendship survives. The person is shown able to be trusted, reliable, et cetera. When it matters, friends are there. On the other side are internal tests. Friends do not always get along. But what happens after a disagreement or fight? Is that it? Or afterwards, does it get worked out, and the two individuals end up closer together? Strong long-lasting friendship requires going through these kinds of situations, more than once. And the friendship passes through on the other side. Strong healthy long-lasting relationships are neither common nor easy. They require work, effort, perseverance, and a dropping of both people’s guards, the images we all show the world. No one is an entirely open book. But you have to know more than the cover to know someone. And when someone has one of those relationships with me, I can be possessive. I am not on the best of terms with either of my parents (nor have I been since I was young), yet whenever someone says something negative about one of them – even if all that person has gone off of are my rants about them – I stop the person. No matter what problems I have with them or any of “my people” – they are my people. And generally speaking, I will not tolerate flak about them. I have sometimes, when concerned, talked about flaws or faults some might have with another individual who knows that person well and cares, but I am very protective of them from outsiders. I am invested in them in a way I am not with most people. I get to know people, interact on friendly terms, like who they are as individuals, yadda yadda, but that does not mean I particularly…care about them or what happens to them. But I care about my people (and the list is small, countable on fingers, if I wanted to count them).

What would you see in the Mirror of Erised? In my answer, I said that I wished to see everyone I love happy. And that is still true and has been for a long time. As I explained, I can be possessive. As such, my happiness is partly dependent upon theirs. It makes me happy to see them happy. For me to be happy, we must all be happy. My heart would not be content if I got everything I desired related to me but my sister was miserable. But, of course, a large part of “we’re all happy” for me to be happy involves me getting what I want as well. I want to reach the top of my field, be the best, and be recognized for it. My lab will have everything provided for it needs. And after hours, I come back to a comfortable stylish house that provides for my personal needs. I may or may not be in a long-term romantic relationship or not. What matters, when it comes to people, is that I have my people nearby. Essentially, I see myself accomplishing everything I wish to do in life. That isn’t to say I would be sated – like some happy fat rich person. There is always more to go for, so once I have what I see now, I will see something else in the mirror.

Pick one or two canon qualities from each of the four houses that you possess and explain why you picked them:
Gryffindor - Nerve. Nerve for me is more long-term than bravery. You are brave in specific moments, but nerve has a tenacity that can include moments of bravery (for a canon reference, I would say that 7th year Neville had nerve for both the year-long perseverance and the continuation of that of chopping off Nagini’s head even when everything has supposedly been lost, still going on). I have faced prejudice for almost everything that I view as essential to me: Christian (when I was), female, Jewish, not being “technically” Jewish, “conservative,” “liberal,” “moderate,” not straight, American, being from a small city, et cetera. When I think about it all together, it almost seems ridiculous. Life is not a song. Life has generally not been pleasant or enjoyable for these kinds of reasons for as long as I can remember (I had an adult try to rip my logic of belief in God to pieces when I was eight). I remember in high school having a most shocking conversation, for both sides, about an English teacher. The other person said he had not felt comfortable with the teacher because there was a sadness about him, his life, and in the books he taught that as a young person in high school, he did not feel he could connect with. He felt that the English teacher who was happy, optimistic and admitted to being incapable of understanding why anyone would want to commit suicide as better for high school students. I stared at him in shock, for I had connected in exactly the opposite fashion. Yet somehow, overall in life, I have never given up. I keep going – whether I think things are likely to get better or not. I keep trying, keep going, and though things can get me down, they never keep me down. And this quality in Gryffindor I think I connect with better than any other.

Hufflepuff - Patience. I chose only this trait as opposed to loyal or both because as I answered in my application, loyalty is not inherently definitive about who you are, and although I am a loyal person in my way, I do not feel as though it is in a Hufflepuff fashion. Returning to patience, not everything comes as immediately in life as we would like. Although it is true in the entire world, science is a very good example of that. Patience is required for planning, analyzing, and not getting bored along the way. I make plans outside of research as well. A Nobel Prize is not won overnight (yes I would like one), and my life and goals are planned, not to every detail as they are flexible for opportunities, but I am on the right track. I am doing what it takes to get where I want to go and do what I want to do, and trying to enjoy it as much as possible. Patience also shows itself with my temper – I do not blow up. When I angry, I stay calm, to the point I have frightened people while not meaning to when angry. Generally, blowing up doesn’t help anyone, and it can greatly hurt your chances for the situation to go as you want it to go(whether to find out why, prevent something from happening again, et cetera). Being calm, having patience, usually brings about better results.

Ravenclaw – Ready Mind. Many people see intelligence as “knowing things”. Yet how I define it, intelligence is just about this Ravenclaw trait - a ready mind. A ready mind means that one is ready to learn, open to learning, and trained well enough to be able to do so. Someone cannot learn calculus if they do not know basic algebra. There is some certain level of knowledge and understanding to it, but mostly it’s in the training. And while my mind is not apt to learning everything (languages were the bane of my academic life), for most things, I have a ready mind. I have learned from a liberal arts education how to think and critically. And I’ve learned how to learn from more than simply the classroom. Most of our lives are not going to be spent there (unless one becomes a teacher), and so never giving up learning is important. After all, no one will get anywhere if they cannot learn more.

Slytherin – Ambition. There is a lot I want to achieve before I die. I want to rise to a much higher position in the scientific world than I currently have. I want to discover more, win a Nobel Prize, have my own excellent lab, et cetera. I want to be able to shape young minds as well as some direction of the field. I want to be published. There are so many things I want, but I am not simply sitting back and going “I want this, waaaah.” As I said before in my definition of patience, I have much planned out. I am on the path to get what I want and be where I want to be. I am networking when I can, taking into account what other people say about possibilities for my path in order to take the exact route that is best for me. I will utilize everything I can to get there. Ambition has been what has kept me going – that goal that cannot be reached immediately but will be worked towards. Life will get better because I will make it better for myself. My rise is not the grabbing on of someone else’s coattails. Each step of life, even back in high school, was for the promise of more. I wanted to leave my hometown and the small group of people who stayed there. I was better than that. I got out. I went thousands of miles away to a great college that was what I wanted to continue. I took hard classes immediately to get ahead – to take even harder ones, to do research, to be the best choice for the next step along the way. I do enjoy the steps. Each one pushes me higher and that much closer to my goal. If this step, way, whatever is all there is, that’s not enough. It’s not enough to just live. I have to have something to live for. Some people do not have that, and I have seen their lives flounder and fail. But I have it, and I am going to get it.

Explain why you feel misplaced in your current house: I do not feel as if my claw tendencies are the most dominant part of my personality – or at least not anymore. I have come to know many people from the Harry Potter fandom, and at first they exclaim that I am “oh so claw” or some variant of that. But upon deeper analysis they see other traits as dominant and notice the elements of a different house when observing my thought process. As I realized that these people were correct, I came to realize I am not nearly as Claw as I thought I was. That actually, I do not fit in that House anymore when I take into account my motives and reasons for doing certain things. There is nothing inherently wrong or bad about Ravenclaw as a House; I simply feel as though I have come to operate differently. I don't feel like I can be myself in a House where I don't seem to belong. I see the world in different colors now and interact with it in different ways. So while I do enjoy interacting one-on-one, in a group, I feel like I have become the odd one out. I can pull up the claw to blend in and get along, but it’s not me being me. And being here should be about being with people who are more like me.

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4) Being Polite vs. Being Right

Which do you think is more important to a Slytherin, a Gryffindor, a Hufflepuff, and a Ravenclaw.

Slytherin; Being polite. If a Slytherin knows s/he is right, s/he knows. The truth is no less the truth because an idiot cannot see it. And a Slytherin thinks ahead, considers the advantages and disadvantages of different routes, different actions. There is a calculation, a thoughtfulness, which understands that being so stubborn and so determined to be right can burn bridges and turn others away from helping you. After all, when has someone denied helping someone because s/he was polite? If it has happened, it has happened fewer times than someone has decided against helping someone for how much they refused to compromise being right to anything else. As such, the Slytherin is polite.

Gryffindor; Being right. Harry definitely shows this. Dumbledore, even, shows this. They always have to be right. That is not to say they are all pompous jackasses like James Potter was in school, but that need to be right and for the world to know what is right can rub a lot of people the wrong way. That is why they do not always get along with people who disagree with them. Rather than backing down, they have to show the other person how it really is, what’s really right. They do not necessarily think about how, at times, they are rude and hurtful to others by doing so. They often believe that if they manage to convince the other person, certainly the other person will thank them for lifting the covers off their eyes – except quite often this technique has the opposite effect, and only pushes people away.

Hufflepuff; Being polite. This politeness is not necessarily so much from a selfish place, about personal advancement or networking but consideration of others. There is wide diversity in the world, and disagreements do not mean that only one side is right. There are many sides to things, and they can see that. That gives them no need to have to prove their rightness at the expense of hurting other people. It’s that person’s choice and life.

Ravenclaw Being right. I see this as more along an intellectual level than moral level. A good example is many scientists I know, and the subject of evolution. As they see it, the science proves that it happened – see, it’s in the data, the figures. It’s not so much about them being right as the fact it simply is right. And given there is evidence to back it up, how can any one deny it? That’s rejection of fact. And so they do not give up. They badger ( XP ) people with it because it is undeniable to them. It is not that they like being rude but that it can be hard for them to respect an opinion that goes against fact. Except what they can forget is that facts constantly change, science evolves and has to constantly admit its own previous mistakes when new information is presented. Some scientists tend to forget that, they cling to their “truths” and sometimes refuse to admit that they were wrong, which can make them just as narrow-minded as the people they were trying to convince.