I've started to focus my efforts for the first month of this semester on forming connections with top performing students in my engineering classes. With that in mind, there are really two different kinds of students I'm looking for. Those who are practically minded, and those who are theoretically minded. Sometimes you find overlap between the two, but often you don't. Take Zeb and Tiberius as examples of this.

Zeb is very practically minded and technically skilled. He is exactly the kind of person who is good at managing industry and growth in an existing sector. He's a quick learner and good at applying his knowledge. Tiberius, by comparison, is not the kind of person you want managing other people. He's finicky, and prone to going on tangents for years on end that yield no results. Tiberius is good at something that Zeb is not, which is novel application of ideas to discover entirely unknown fields of knowledge. The almost single minded obsession with an esoteric topic is what allows him to power through failure after failure. If Zeb faced the same failures, he'd likely move on to a more practical direction to expend his own effort in.

Both are necessary for advancement, but both behave quite differently as individuals. Both are the types of individuals I'm looking for among the student body. There have been a few students who have fit in either category, though within engineering, there are only four that I've recognized so far. There are some in other fields of study that I've talked to the corresponding department head as individuals to keep an eye on as potential future staff if they seem like they're worth it. In some sense, keeping the best of the best as faculty is very similar to selectively breeding crops, sacrificing the present for the future by keeping the top performers on to train others.

One of the students in engineering, a first-year dwarf by the name of Ararat Ostark, has taken a real interest in the self-propelled wagons. His story is a fairly interesting one, or at least I think so. He was quite young when the demon lord Malagord invaded the dwarven continent. Hailing from Ostark, he was fairly safe, but many of his formative years were filled with hearing the horror stories of people fleeing the demon invasions. As he grew a little older he was able to start helping with labor for the war effort, but was still far to young to see combat.

Around that time was when we started to deliver military items for the war effort, and he was one of many who assisted in the logistics within Ostark of handling the various items we delivered, including the tanks which he believes were one of the main reasons the war turned around. Since he never actually fought directly in the war, his only real experience with demons directly was working with our demons to unload cargo from our ships, so he really doesn't have any negative biases towards us compared to many of the older dwarves. He's living proof that some of our earlier decisions as a country have had at least some of the intended effect on the way the other races look at us.

It's a bit too early to determine if he's going to end up as a practically or theoretically minded individual, though he shows aptitude for both. I could easily see him becoming hyper-focused on automobiles or having a more generalized understanding of machines as a whole. Unlike many of the members of the self-propelled wagon club, he's also shown an aptitude for almost all aspects of their construction, rather than specialized components. For now, I'm just keeping a watchful eye on him, since he's only been here for a semester, though he's exactly the kind of individual that, in three years time, would be able to go back to the dwarven continent and create an entire automobile factory from almost nothing.

The next individual of interest in engineering is a high-prestige hobgoblin by the name of Zentoo. I didn't recognize him, given he'd evolved and that I've worked with hundreds, if not thousands, of demons on various projects, but he was one of the initial goblins that was an assistant to Tiberius doing fluorite research up until we had the unfortunate death due to what seemed to be radiation sickness. He shows a high aptitude in matters related to fluorite and it's applications, as well as the required safety that many others don't fully grasp the importance of. The unfortunate part is that despite his aptitude, he's reluctant to pursue that knowledge. My guess is that he still has some lingering trauma from the way events unfolded in the past. He's only a second-year though, so it's possible I'll be able to work with him to overcome it. If he does, I suspect he'll be a very valuable asset.

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It's much easier for me when skilled individuals, like Zentoo, are demons, if only because we already are their home country. It's easy to plan for their future without needing to worry about them leaving with their knowledge. That may change in the future though, as eventually I expect other countries will want to have recruiters scouting individuals from the academy. Of course they'll be paying a hefty fee for the privilege to do so.

The other two engineering students of interest were not demons, however. They were a second and third year pair of brothers, Kulut and Sakar Karnosk. The older brother, Sakar, has shown himself to be quite a fast learner of all the various subjects I've taught. Kulut has only started to really shine this last semester though, after the tool casting and optimizing club was formed. There, he's shown a one minded determination in casting and crafting high quality tools. Together, they're quite the dynamic duo, since one of them is very good at organizing the larger scale effort, and the other is good at generating individual ideas.

It'll actually be quite difficult for me to convince them to stay here unfortunately. They have quite the large and closely knit extended family back in their hometown of Karnosk, so I think the most I can hope for is to establish good ties with them. Karnosk is located fairly well for it to be attached to the railroad in the near future though. It's a bit into the mountainous area but sits between our trade city and the capital, if a bit inland, so a rail junction could allow it to be attached to the existing rail network a lot easier than many other locations in the future. Even if they're still living and working in Karnosk, it doesn't mean we can't both profit by working together on some joint projects.

I still also have to set the proper criteria for what graduating from the academy means. Some students only have a bit less than three semesters left, though the majority have five or more since the first class had a lot of struggles associated with it. I had planned previously for students to only graduate after they contributed back to the academy in some way. That goal was perhaps a bit ambitious, though it was also ambiguous enough that I can still probably fulfill the spirit of it. What I had envisioned was that students would contribute discoveries and knowledge back to the academy, but that is clearly not going to happen for the majority of students who are barely keeping up with coursework.

These discoveries and contributions were supposed to secure our position as the technological hub of the world while also compensating us monetarily for the effort of teaching people. The top 10% might be able to contribute meaningfully, but what will it mean for the rest, and how can they contribute? This is something I'll have to think on for a bit. It may have to be done on a case by case basis with faculty having the students present their idea as a final year project, and the individual faculty members judging if it's worthy enough for that individuals skill to count. That would mean uneven treatment between individuals though, with harder workloads being put on the most capable.

In reality, that's how things go, but it may cause some resentment amount students, and that can be especially bad if the students who are feeling resentment towards us are actually the most skilled individuals who we would want to have the best possible relationship with moving forward. It's a tricky problem that will probably require a complex solution.

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