Week 6 Practical: Case clinic 2: the 13-step stairwell

The second supervised on-campus observation, and the week the Field Case File is due — a stairwell that returns you to the floor you started on after exactly thirteen steps, sometimes.

29 March 2027

Before the practical#

Bring both cases’ logs — this week reviews case clinic 1 alongside the new case, and the Field Case File is due this week.

In the practical#

The case: the west stairwell in the Design building occasionally returns an observer to the floor they started on after descending or ascending thirteen steps, rather than the floor the stairwell’s geometry would predict. It does not do this every time, or to every observer, or even necessarily to the same observer twice in one week — which is most of why this course wants it logged rather than explained.

Two additions to what earlier cohorts logged:

• A non-visual signal. When the effect is live, the stairwell’s light fixtures dim below a stated wattage threshold — independently of whether anyone counts steps that day. Log the reading; it doesn’t require a count to be worth recording.
• The fourteen-step edge case. Thirteen steps, counted correctly, returns you to your starting floor. Fourteen does not — it skips you down an extra floor instead, rather than simply failing to return you. This is why the course treats “thirteen steps” as a stated rule with a documented edge, not a round number that happens to recur.

One entry in the case’s history is on record but not open for further observation: Incident SU-6-04, an expedition that continued past a disengagement trigger. Access to that flight has been restricted since, and no further detail is available to this cohort — cite it as precedent, not as something you can go verify yourself.

Same protocol as case clinic 1: buddy pairs, step counts logged aloud as they happen rather than reconstructed afterwards from memory, disengagement the moment either observer stops trusting the count.

Afterwards#

The Field Case File is due this week, covering both case clinics. This week’s lecture reviews both cases and what a strong write-up of them looks like.