Dragon's life in college

Ch 49, Deep's assignments

As time always did in school, it both flew and crawled by. There were times when Nigel was certain the days had somehow added more hours on, only for him to glance at a calendar and realize they were already halfway through the semester. It was almost scary how fast time could go by without one really realizing it. It was always scary when he realized that he was rapidly approaching almost halfway through his college career. He still had another semester to go before the official halfway marker, but it was still approaching far more quickly than he would care to think. And as everyone knows, the latter half always goes by faster than the first half.

Still, he couldn't deny that he enjoyed his time, even if it was going by too fast and too slow and filled with too many assignment to make him happy. But school was all about assignment, and most of them weren't as bad as he might have thought, only needing to pull a few all-nighters, though those were only when teachers were particularly mean and had scheduled multiple assignments due on the same day.

The only teacher who wasn't in league with the other teachers to overload a few specific days out of the week with assignments was Deep. Although to be fair, Deep didn't assign any due dates at all. The only thing he did assign were practice exercises, some of which made perfect sense to Nigel, such as the posture training, and others which didn't make sense at all, such as standing up to his chest in water while balancing on one foot.

"I'm sure Dad has his reasons," Oceania said as she watched Nigel. "Although to be fair, this might just be him seeing what he can get you to do under the guise of an assignment."

"Does he do that often?" Ryu asked. He and Oceania were sitting on the edge of the pond, watching Nigel struggle to balance while Turtle swam in circles around him, on the hunt for some sort of plant or mud he needed for his art project.

"Assign random things to his students? Yes," Oceania answered. "He started it as some sort of social experiment when he became a teacher. He wanted to figure out what students would do if he listed it as an assignment, no matter how bizarre it might be."

"What has he assigned?"

"I remember one time his students were supposed to get up and sing the opening song to the Love of Two Frogs in the cafeteria. I think about half the class did it, while the other half didn't. Dad had a good laugh about it later, although the school head did tell him that he couldn't assign public singing as homework unless he was teaching a singing class."

"What is the Love of Two Frogs?" Ryu asked, as Nigel face-planted into the water for at least the 23rd time.

"It's an overly romantic and frankly terrible play about two frogs who are in love. It's something popular among young water dragonets, but only if they're of a certain personality type. Even when I was young I could never understand it, but every single water dragon knows about it so I can imagine the embarrassment from having to sing one of its songs in public."

"So you think this could be your father being your father?" Ryu gestured toward Nigel who was currently imitating a chicken trying to fly.

"Maybe, but knowing him it could also have a perfectly logical reason behind it, that he just doesn't feel like explaining. I know when he was teaching me to control my breath he had me practice balancing large rocks on my wings while swimming in major currents. I didn't understand it at the time but later I figured out he was making me practice balance in turbulent situations while also working on my strength."

"But at least that can have a logical explanation to it. This just seems pointless."

"Maybe, but it could also be him getting Nigel to relax in public. Turtle!"

Turtle might have just found his needed plant, under Nigel's foot. As he would claim later, he hadn't realized that Nigel was standing on it, but as the other three argued back, what else could a dragon's foot be mistaken for other than a dragon's foot. And since water dragons don't come in shades of red, who else would it be.

Anyway, despite Deep's unique training positions, Nigel found himself steadily improving. It wasn't in the obvious leaps and bounds he had hoped for at first, rather it was more of a steady trickle, which occasionally flowed into larger pools while at other times it narrowed a bit. Either way, he continued improving. Or at the very least, his swimming skills was improving. To be fair, Turtle's new siblings would still be able to swim circles around him, but since they were water dragons, he didn't think it was an equal comparison. At the very least some very serious variables needed to be factored in.

While swimming lessons weren't included in his plan of study, or his long-term study goals, it was still something. And it was something he definitely needed to get used to since Deep loved to assign work which involved water. Again, this probably had to do with Deep being a water dragon. There were a few times when Nigel did have to remind Deep that he wasn't a water dragon. And while he wasn't in danger of dying from drowning, easily at least, he still wasn't able to swim under the water.

"Hmmm, yes, I forgot about that," Deep said when Nigel reminded him. "Well, we'll just take advantage of your long capacity under water. Might want to ask my daughter or Turtle for some water-proof paper and ink."

Nigel had originally wondered what Deep had meant by that, until he was handed his most recent homework. Every single one of them involved him holding his breath under water for different amounts of time while doing different things. At the very least these exercises made sense to him, since Deep had commented recently about improving lung capacity. And Nigel was able to figure out the purpose for the water-proof paper and ink very quickly, since carrying out all of Deep's instructions took a lot of time. Thankfully there were enough exercises which did not involve him using his claws so he had time to write his papers.

And there were a lot of papers