At Delphi, students study on their own in ominously silent "course rooms," which are patrolled by "supervisors" noting errors on clipboards with pink paper. That may seem like an Orwellian setpiece to you, but don't worry -- they're just there to enforce Study Technology. That's totally not an Orwellian-sounding phrase at all!

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Study Technology is mostly about understanding words and modeling concepts in clay. Hubbard said that if you yawn or look away from your study material, like any normal person is bound to do, then there's a word you don't understand. That's what the supervisor with his pink clipboard is for -- to make you look up words in the dictionary until your eyes fall out of your head. So you'd better not yawn or, Xenu forbid, look around -- because the Study Technology supervisor will punish you with words.

The Delphian School

"Now sit there and memorize everything from 'Tedious' to 'Unnecessary.'"

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But the modeling concepts in clay part seems like it would actually be OK, especially if you're the artistic type. There was one kid who would spend hours crafting the most beautiful sculptures. He got in trouble for it, of course. Delphi does not encourage that kind of artistic sensibility. The supervisors literally told him to make stick figures just like everybody else. That poor kid didn't last long. His final act of rebellion was to purposely fail the examination for the human anatomy course. (All Delphi students always get 100 percent on their exams. If they miss a question, they are required to restudy it until they pass.) This kid intentionally messed up his answers about the reproductive system so badly that he was required to represent that system in clay. His response was to sculpt the most fabulously pornographic depiction of Michelangelo-level copulation ever created.