THE LEAGUE OF 42 (A History?) (Last updated: Wednesday, August 20, 2014)

I joined HiH on 23rd April 2014 at 7:33pm IST (Yes, I had to check my email for that one). And this is the history of our dorm.

In those days, one was allocated a dorm by default upon signing up. The default member limit for a dorm was 5, unless the dorm leader chose to remove/add members. So 5 people signing up around the same time were put in a dorm and the first person became the leader. That is how the algorithm went. Every 5th person to join HiH got to become a dorm leader of a new dorm by default. So, I was put up in dorm #15,991 and by some stroke of luck, I was the dorm leader too. Because I was the first person in #15,991. One other person joined soon after, and by the time I had completed my profile and explored the site, 3 more had joined and my dorm was "full". By full, I mean, the next few people to join went to #15,992 and so on, unless I removed someone from my dorm.

Unfortunately I don't remember the names of the first dorm-mates. There was a British girl called Iona Fleming, I guess. This was a time when the site still had the old interface, ran on a single server and glitched all over the place (Hogwarts even had a secret fifth House because of the glitches, called Boudwin House- the House of Ghosts). Some of us will remember those days. Fondly. I remember the day enough people had contributed their ten dollars to the site and we could afford the additional server. The site was full of promise. Thousands of people joined every day. Anyway.

I decided 5 was too less a number, so I kept the dorm open. I was never interested in doing courses, I was content being on #ZeroForever. But I loved the Great Hall. The weekend of25, 26 & 27 April, I stayed awake for 66 hours in the GH and recruited people for the dorm. I had this advertisement post I would spam the GH with (there were no chat prefects then): "If any of the other newer Ravenclaws are looking for a dorm, or the older first years looking to switch, you are invited to Dorm #15,991: The Bat League. Because WE ARE AWESOME."

Yes, The Bat League is what I had named the dorm in a flash of brilliance ("lel wut?") and decided on a limit of 21. The idea was to have 20 dorm-mates to groom towards making this dorm awesome. There was no Elyteerin or Riddikkulus Riddles or Ethical Eagles or Aureus Room back then. Just one most popular dorm called Curious Claws (#877), led by Melissa Southerland. Two things made it popular- one, Keith was in that dorm, and two, the dorm had 246 members and counting. Now almost all the cool Prefects back then who ever frequented the GH, belonged to Ravenclaw, and of course CC. There was Nick, Cristina Trail, Shannon Mobley,... These people took time out from grading to come and speak to us. They patiently answered every question we had because the old site was a bit tricky- "How to earn points?", "Where do I register for courses?", "How does one become Prefect?", "How do I leave my dorm?". (This may or may not have included my ill-hidden attempts to troll Cristina and try to break her infinite patience levels, pretending to be a newbie). There weren't many PAs then since we only had 7 subjects, and Professors NEVER came down to the GH. So these Prefects were quite popular and new people who joined the site ended up joining whatever dorm the Prefects were in. That is how CC just kept growing.

Back to that famous weekend, the dorm had around 18 new members by the following Monday. From that first batch of dorm-mates, I remember Aaron Kirshenbaum, Simon Potter, Anna-Noel Imbriaco, Molina Shutt, Brenna Sharkey, Elessandra Cascabel,Kelsey Douglas, Bruce Wayne (Emily Shakelford), Anne Wellington ($3), Nourhan Medhat, Samuel Gonzalez, Nymphadora Lupin, Rhiannon Fleetwood, Amanda Brockman, Lauren, Laurel Davis, Jennifer Serna, Megan Duncan,... Anna-Noel Imbriaco, Kelsey Douglas and Rhiannon Fleetwood are the only "survivors" from that batch today.

The old site allowed dorm posts, apart from a chat room and a member list viewable to all dorm-mates. So we would communicate through dorm posts. There was no option to "like" or "comment" (This feature came with the site upgrade). My sister joined the site too, so we had another Batman, and since we already had Bruce Wayne, that might have been one of the reasons for "The Bat League". So now that we were 20+1, I divided the 20 into 10 pairs according to their timezones and made them "study buddies". The idea was to get to know each other and I was the +1 who wasn't going to study anyway. I was happy being the "manager". And thus, came about our first dorm spreadsheet, which only had the 21 names and list of 10 pairs.

Soon, I realized many of them were inactive, so if I wanted to keep the dorm active, either remove them and start over or bring in more people. So the following week, I doubled the size of the dorm. And put together a special spam team (Aaron, Samuel, Simon and me). The goal was to recruit 21 people over the weekend. The second batch of dorm-mates hadAlanna Teixeira, Fiona Drake, Flovilus Xebulon, Kimberley Fowler, Laura DiMitri, Alayla Roix, Tori Hatter, Ama Marie, Mary X, Lylia Lee, Onji Thomas, Nicole Leininger, Cristina Trail, Taylor Haynes,... We were upto 39 by Friday and we now had the most popular Prefect in the dorm! I am especially fond of the first two batches because these were people I handpicked, each one of them from the GH, one at a time. I spoke to them, got to know them and invited them to the dorm. Each one of them was special to me. I also encouraged them to speak to one another.

Over the week, I renamed the dorm to The League of 42 in a fresh stroke of brilliance ("Thank God!"). Manon van Liempt, Bronze Feather and Dani Ghostie were the last of thefirst complete L42. And for the first time ever, I closed the dorm. We had our first dorm meeting on 2nd May, which was attended by 6 of us. I can only recall Cristy, Taylor andBronze now. Also, now we had TWO Prefects!

Highlights of our Dorm Timeline since:

* On 4th May, Cristy created the Facebook group. The first introduction read: "Welcome to The League of 42! We're the smarter of the smart Ravenclaws. So make sure you strut around like one! #‎CawCawRavenClaw The motto of our dorm is "Carpe Diem"#‎SeizeTheDay. Also, I have prepared this Google Spreadsheet: [dorm members only link]. Please make sure you update your points in this document on a weekly basis. Thank you."

* On 6th May, we decided on the Council after a vote. It was the dorm leader, plus the two Prefects in the dorm- Cristy and Dani, were the permanent members, one spot for the person with the highest points and a rotating spot (in alphabetical order). The first Council had me,Cristy, Dani, Manon and Aaron, and the first proposal we approved was the addition of the course tab in the spreadsheet for subject-wise tracking, proposed by Dani on 8th May.

* On the follwing day (9th May), we approved our second proposal for the dorm Chatzy byRhi.

* HiH upgraded to the new platform/version on 10th May. So our dorm no longer had posts, but there was now a blue banner instead, and I was told only the dorm leader can view the member list.

* Manon was the first L42-er to make the Ravenclaw House Leaderboard and eventually the Hogwarts Leaderboard.

* On 15th May, I made my first of many confessions of "deni yu iz mi hero lel" (These words have since been banned in the dorm). The same day I published the book titled "8 Steps to Effective Dorm Management" (http://www.hogwartsishere.com/library/book/1016/read/).

* On 17th May, we had our first Frozen sing-along. With a lot of *phasepam* from me. But this didn't discourage my adorable dorm-mates one bit. On the same day, I earned my first HiH points, at last. My acceptance speech read: "I thank my Dormies, each one of them, for encouraging me and pushing me to do my assignment, even when I was reluctant to. kresty, deni, rhiennun, unji, ghostie, mennun, nicoel, ema merry, lylie, TDB and all the rest. kresty, deni & mennun inspired me, while rhiennun & unji moved me to tears (and epic facepalms) with their Frozen way of motivation. It was a wonderful feeling to update the Google doc for the first time ever. *sniff* Novellus is no longer on zero points now. It's a start. I will go on a massive point accumulation rampage now. Thank you again, all you beautiful angels. *bows*"

* On 18th May, Dani created the Dorm Twitter account (@LeagueOf42). The same day we set our first target of 10,000 points by end of the month.

* On 23rd May, we decided on our Dorm Logo and the new motto: "amicitium coniungit omnes" Friendship Conquers All.

* Some time during the last week of May, Rhi came up with the idea of having a Dorm Diary(http://www.hogwartsishere.com/library/book/1311/read/)

On 31st May, I quit HiH and deleted my account for personal/real life reasons. And took a break from the internet and went on a vacation alone. Yeah, that was pretty dramatic, I know. I had not foreseen one thing though, the future of this dorm. After I quit, the leadership passed on to the next random person in the dorm, which happened to be Amanda Brockman, and I left the dorm locked so additional people couldn't even get in. Cristy and Dani tried their best to reach her to come up with a solution to the crisis, but Amanda wasn't active anymore. #15,991 was now defunct and L42 was down to 38 members.

Amber, Cristy, Dani, Manon, Rhi and everyone was amazing with their support for me. Two weeks later, I rejoined HiH on 14th June 2014 at 8:51pm IST. I created a new dorm and#24,669: The League of 42 was born. I sent owls to the original L42, requesting to move to the new dorm. Only 16 responded, which meant that in my absence, the rest of them had gone inactive too. For the first time, we were 25 people short and a new dorm witn a new number. And thus began our great Initiation Program. Since I couldn't give much time to the dorm any more because of real life issues, we put together a team for the mass recruiting process. Amber, Cristy, Dani and Rhi were part of The Eagles. Manon was included later on. Rhi prepared an Initiate Questionnaire. The first new batch included Dana Kreidler,Deanna Brooks, Fadi Royale, Isabel Rhodesse, Janessa Adel, Jens Thienpoint, James Bullard, Kelsey Custodio, Lyra Heathers, Malav Dave, Ronn Mina, Willow Sangue,Alyssa Sparkles, Samantha Flourish, Ana Sanchez Moreno, Valentina Murnaghan,Lyndsie Klein-Palmer,... And the fresh names brought life back in the dorm! 

Some of them went inactive again and a few more had to leave (or be removed) due to drama back at HiH, and a second round of recruiting was needed and this time Abigail Thurmond, Laura Jean, Lydia Evans, Clara LeRune, Damian Luthraug, Emily Stewart,Erika Esch, Jonny Diaz, Marie Ferguson, Professor Melanie Silvers, Rae Haston ♛ and Taylor Mote were added. The last round of recruiting brought Annoriel Woods,Caitlin Douglas, Koala Green and Veronica Poppins to complete the L42, and the dorm was closed for the second time.

On 26th June, we had our first Skype session (me, Amber, Manon and Rhi). On 5th July, Dana created the Dorm DJ Room (http://plug.dj/league-of-42/). We have since broken our 10,000 and 25,000 point targets in record time and have now decided to go for the40,000 point barrier. We are as of today, the most popular dorm on HiH, and all the credit goes to each one of you. You make this dorm awesome.

And that, my friends, is the story of The League of 42. So far.

~Novellus Batman ♛