#youcanthandelthetruth

my favorite type of dragon is the Smaug - riddle-masters, incredibly old, incredibly powerful, but capricious; they play with humanoids like cats with mice. 

I find force-of-nature, brutish dragons a little boring tbh.  

Bruh this is the 19th category of students you’ve said this about

creme brûlée: describe your style

This was my reaction to British unis, to be honest. Though that said, the grading system in the UK seems totally arbitrary in comparison to American unis, and it's the bane of my existence right now as I apply to American unis for my PhD and have to get them to understand my MA marks are actually considered very good despite it otherwise coming off as hORRIBLE by American grading standards.

idk, because I grew up in Scotland so 70% has always been an A? it’s just How It’s Done in the UK I guess, means you can get crazy high outstanding grades because most people are in the 60s? i have no idea. it’s just what i’m used to. english school exams have A* which apparently means something, we had ‘band 1′/’band 2′/’band 3′ A which is I guess the same as firsts work at university

@youcanthandelthetruth replied to your post “american universities: it is entirely possible to score 90% and above....”

So like, how many questions are you expected to get wrong on a test and still be doing okay?

a pass is 40%, not sure how it works in between that and a 2:1 which is 60% and a first is 70% and upwards. i only have experience in the humanities so there are no ‘tests’ of questions you can either get right or wrong; everything is essays and discussion. basically the marking system is stingier. i got an 82 in last term’s translation and was told that’s a really, really unusually high mark to be getting in second year. afaik an 82 in the US is a B. lol.

youcanthandelthetruth replied to your post “american universities: it is entirely possible to score 90% and above....”

Also what does a person have to do to be The One Professor?

In most Commonwealth nations, as well as northern Europe, the title professor is the highest academic rank at a university. In the United States and Canada, the title of professor is also the highest rank, but a larger percentage achieve it, about a quarter.[4] In these areas, professors are scholars with doctorate degrees (typically Ph.D. degrees) or equivalent qualifications who teach in four-year colleges and universities.

is what wikipedia says. we don’t get taught by anyone without a phd (except like, GTAs) so what that looks like to me is ‘p much everyone who teaches is a professor’ -- in the UK you have to be professor of something, like holding a specific chair, but like because of the devaluation of the term in the US, universities have started making up more chairs to stop all the academics from just going to the US for the title, so where there was originally just a (single) ‘professor of music’ there might now be a professor of composition as well, and some ‘associate professors’ whatever the hell that means

I like the concept of "history, but there's magic there," but it very rarely works for me when it's the kind of magic where you shoot fireballs from your hands - alchemy that works, or poultices that really heal you significantly faster, or even consulting demons or angels is fine, but anything much more overt doesn't do it for me. That's just aesthetic, but there are bigger problems: 

I don't know that you have to think about the way your magic affected the world by existing, but it's probably good to have an answer for "but why didn't they just magic away [some really big historical problem]" ("because it's too big" is an acceptable answer there, though). 

And really, the thing I hate most is arcane explanations for real world catastrophes or atrocities ("Elder Gods made Hitler do the Holocaust" is one I've seen fairly often), because it always feels trivializing - it's hard to accept that despite humanity's strength nature is stronger and that while it is in human nature to do great things for love and good, it is also in human nature, without the prompting of the supernatural, to do things for evil, but I don't think turning away from it by saying "it was Cthulhu" is a) the best way to deal with it or b) interesting.