we have a new color today. brown. ish.

procrastination is the name of today's game. i have many exams on my desk but cannot find the motivation to do anything more than stare back at them. damn grades. students dont like them, and honestly, neither do teachers. i have a friend at a university here who said at the end of her classes (not at the school where i teach), the teacher asked the students, as a whole, what grade they thought they deserved. that was the grade they received. my friend did a lot of work, perhaps more than all others, but she said she deserved a 90. others, who did nothing, said they deserved a 10. they got what they wanted. is that a wise system?

do grades really matter? can you put a number on someone and evaluate them? iq tests are quite stupid in general, but so are sat's, toefl, gre, gmat, etc. what can you memorize? how good are you at following a system and answering questions based on knowledge of how test's are made. mr kaplan made a lot of money this way by simply instructing his friends, later on private clients, about how to take a standardized. if courses such as this work, and they do, then what does that tell us about testing?

of course i would be a liar if i said that such testing is not helpful. it all depends on what kind of help is needed. the people who receive the results are looking for something. what? will they get a fair judgment of a student's ability?

in the end, i have to grade these damn things. i might as well start now.