(no subject)

[sythyry]

Digression: Grades

Speaking of grades, we have often been exposed to the grades of your classes but I don't recall ever seeing the scale actually laid out in any sort of order. I mean, it's rather obvious that finely considered is better then tolerably considered, but is finely considered better then well reasoned?

No, it is not better, nor is it worse. Not uniformly better, that is.

We don't have a system which chops all grades up into a few categories that supposedly make sense for all kinds of courses. The grades depend on the course, naturally.

"Finely Considered" is a good grade for courses like "Famous Collections". It means that you looked at things and noticed lots of important features and knew the fine points of what you were seeing. It's a good grade in "Famous Collections", since that's what you're supposed to do in "Famous Collections".

It would be a bad grade in a math course -- it would mean that you had watched the professor do sums, (and, for 'finely', perhaps caught the professor in some errors or some such) but had not successfully done any sums yourself.

I don't know if you could even get that grade in a Spelunking class. Maybe if you'd gotten crippled early on and did some sort of book report on spelunking? No, that should be more of a "Reasoned" or "Investigated" kind of grade. For a "Considered" you'd need to have watched people spelunk. Scrying maybe. It would be awfully hard to arrange.