So I just realized I still haven't told you about the Overlord education initiatives, which is so remiss of me I'm slapping my own wrist with my non-typing hand. You need more than a mayonnaise ban and a little more vacation time to get fully on my side, right? Or maybe you don't, which would be fantastic, and in which case you can look at the following plan as an extra perk.
As many Overlords before me did, I got the majority of my education through non-traditional means. Some go to Assassin school, some go to Wizard school, and some, like me, are chained to our desks in dank basements and forced to learn independently (sorry--homeschooling joke. We find it hard to understand sometimes how people think you can be homeschooled successfully against your will). I'm going to try not to go off on a public school tirade, since I'm sure some poeple feel they had a lovely experience there, but in my opinion the American public school system was created to turn out factory workers and drones, and no number of inspirational posters on the walls are enough to overhaul a severely flawed system.
NOTE FOR THE TEACHERS READING THIS: I love good teachers, and any disparaging comments I make about public schools are absolutely not directed at the educators. I do believe teachers have the power to impact their students' lives tremendously. What I don't believe is that any one teacher, or even most groups of teachers, are strong enough in and of themselves to completely overcome the inherent flaws of a systems that sees students as groups, rather than individuals. And now I really will stop before I get rolling.
One of my education initiatives ties in closely with one of my environmental plans. You see, I think a Shrink Ray in the right hands can do a lot of good. My idea is to devote one large area of the Lair to a series of terrariums and aquariums, all carefully designed to be the closest approximation of a scale-model of the real world as possible. A few of my environmentally-minded staff will spend their time simulating potential disasters in these controlled environments to look for patterns, make predictions on damage, and experiment with solutions. This is where students come in. We'll take applications from the best and the brightest who are interested in making a difference, or even being on the Minion Staff one day, to participate in an internship program. We'll shrink our selected interns down to take them to the Lair, so their perceptions will be too distorted to know exactly where the Lair is. Once there, we'll take them back up to size and give them a few weeks' training on what the environmental minions have been working on lately. Then the environmental minions will simulate a crisis in one terrarium, shrink the interns down to scale, and put them in the terrarium to work on solving the problem, based on what they've been learning. We'll give them time once a week or so to call home, but this is meant to be an environmental immersion program. After working there for a month, we'll take them out to get feedback on what worked, what didn't, and what additional solutions they may have. Depending on how they did, we may even have them plan ther own crisis in one of the terrariums and formulate their own solution, with the minions acting as mentors. The interns would receive academic credit, a small stipend, and a letter of recommendation from me, which I think is a pretty sweet package for a high school senior or college student.
P.S. Another nice thing about the terratiums is that if a member of the staff wants a weekend "away" during a particularly busy time, they can arrange to reserve a beach or mountain simulation and do some swimming or climbing, but still be accessible if they're needed.
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