Doctor to Doctor, what is sex?

Mary is in her final semester of university. Part of her programs make-up involves these seminars which account for certain percentages of a students final grade. The marks that make up the grade are dependent upon being present and participating. You get a higher grade the more you talk apparently. This a very, very, very flawed structure, here is why:

Let's say a seminar is 1 hour and that there are 20 people, I have no idea about how long or how many people but the point is the same. So for everyone to get 100% they would all need to speak for just under 3 min allowing for space between talking points. Additionally any time the T.A. who runs the seminar speaks would also need to be included in calculating the exact amount of time each student would be required to speak in order to get 100%. So let's say for the sake of argument that if you were to evenly distribute the available time so that each student had the opportunity to speak and get 100% it would say 2min 40sec. In some cases I'm sure the math works out to be a much longer speaking time maybe up to 5 min.

Nobody times each response and students are not limited to any predetermined time limits. Some will speak more than once and some will go beyond the time limit needed to equally distribute so that each person has the chance to get 100%. This creates a very uneven playing field. If 10 students all take up 70% of the discussion than the remaining 10 are automatically unable to receive full marks. That would mean that basing the marks on time spoken would have to be monitored to the second in order to grant an objective grade score. But it isn't, which means that the grades are handed out in a subjective manner. A lot of academic grading is based on subjective marking and personally I think it's blatantly wrong. There is too much bias involved in the process both consciously and subconsciously.

Ok so the T.A. writes down or "remembers" who speaks during these seminars. Some, if not all of the grading would be based on the length of time and the quality of what was said. Even that is subjective and flawed. One douche bag could ramble on for 10 minutes while the response may just take a matter of a few words like, "where is your evidence?" to further the discussion. Also, seminar length also comes into play again as there may not be equal amounts of time available for every student to receive full marks responding to claims. Also if a person were to make an idiotic remark such as "Homeopathy works" how do you decide the quality of the comment? On the one hand a remark could be stupid and completely wrong and uninformed but it may also help to spark an in-depth discussion which could lead to more people being educated about reality. Who decides when a remark has substance? A T.A. who is a moron may not understand why homeopathy is idiotic and may score grades for that seminar to favor people who are essentially just making shit up.

None of this actually matters though because essentially the T.A. is just deciding the grade based on what they think happened during the class. If a person you think is attractive talks for 10 minutes you will automatically perceive their vocalization to be better than a person you have contempt for. It's human to like and dislike people for no reason and so the best way to eliminate that bias is to reduce the subjective nature of scoring. no? Also, unless the T.A. is at 100% attention for the entire duration they will almost certainly miss somethings being said. One T.A. told Mary her grade was lower because her attendance wasn't great to which Mary responded "I've been to every seminar". The T.A. had no clue but rather than tell Mary that she would promptly adjust the grade she then made up some other excuse off the top of her head as to why the mark was what it was. There is no oversight because the foundation is flawed. I'm not in University and even I can see just how fucked up this system is.

The worst part is that some of these seminars are worth up to 20% of a courses final grade. That's a huge percentage based on what amounts to a random series of bias guesses and off the cuff marking on the part of inexperienced T.A.s.

Is fucked up, no?

Yesterday morning, after I finally got the rest of my sleep I had a series of fucked up dreams. When I woke up I grabbed Mortimer Jr. and shook him from his slumber and wrote a series of catch words that would remind me later what the dream was about. I forgot about it completely until just now, 16 hours later.

It starts off with Mary and I and we're just moving into a college dorm of some kind on an open floor of a building where all the bedrooms have no doors for privacy. I specifically remember that I was holding an open box with a lamp in it which is something that one would only ever see in a movie or comic-strip. Anyway as Mary and I are bringing our stuff in a group of the floor's other tenants come to greet us and introduce themselves. Of course being a fucked up dream one of the people greeting us is the ex wife. I don't remember what happened to the box or the lamp but I'm pretty darn certain I actually heard myself say "Aw Fuck!" while the location shifted in it's dreaminess state into a college library.

I remember I was a part of a class and we were all issued a very thick hard-cover version of Charlotte's Web. They were very rare editions and worth a pretty penny. For some other dreaminess reason there was a kitchen in the library too with a door and steps like the side entrance of an RV trailer. I wasn't allowed to bring the book into the kitchen so I hid it under a stair. Then where I left the book was gone.

At some point I decided that three cooks were responsible for the theft after all they looked liked young skateboarders in the documentary Dogg Town and Z-boys so they had to be up to no good. Then for whatever reason the entire plot of the dream shifted although I was still in the library. It was the library at Mac and I was up on the 4rth or 5th floor. I went over to a window and was looking down over a grassy courtyard where students and elderly people were hanging out like they always show in movies but doesn't actually happen in real life.

Then I watched a "nerd" rode onto the grass on a bicycle. I have no idea why he was a "nerd" other than my brain decided it and so that's the information it gave me. Anyway the rake I though he was holding was actually a gun and he started shooting people. I remember feeling sick the same way I get when I see real dead people in documentaries. I would hope at least some of you are familiar with that scared, ill sensation. I remember watching as he would just shoot and kill whoever was closest to him. It was fucking terrifying.
Eventually he rode into a group of elderly women where he lost his balance. Right at that moment some people rushed him and got the gun. I thought for sure they were going to shoot him but instead they began to beat him to death which was also terrifying. Then they began to bury him with the shovels they beat him with. For some reason there was now a monstrous pile of beach-sand next to him. The view I had from the library was like when you see security camera footage of awful shit happening and created that same raw, horror feeling.

Then I woke up and wrote it down. Man it was fucked up!
I know people want to put meaning into dreams like this but I can literally explain where every aspect of it came from with the exception of Charlotte's Web.

The awful killing imagery most likely stems from the fact that I've been watching a ton of war documentaries and the mini series "The Pacific" which bloody as fuck.

The surfer's come from browsing the band Real Estate's youtube video's and that MGMT video with the neon people on the beach.

The whole school thing comes from the fact that I consider my tutorials a kind of schooling and also Mary is finishing school and is stressed about it.

The moving thing is obvious.

That leave's the ex wife who I mentioned the other day in a few posts.

Dreams are just the brains way of processing the information collected by our senses during the recent past. They can weave into things we perceive as stories because we are a pattern-seeking and story-telling animal. They're a neurological function to help retain information. Pure, simple, horrifying.

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