Word: whim
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...solution to the mystery of departmental fluctuations is the tragic, but simple one, that nobody has any clear idea of the purpose of an intellectual institution. Courses are chosen--in some cases, even fields--on the basis of relative difficulty, the hour and place of meeting or the whim of an assertive room-mate. There is an arrogant confusion everywhere as to the meaning and value of attending college; and this is related as cause and effect with an analagous chaos in the world generally...
...every shade and color, bent on selling them something--be it an idea for the economic salvation of the nation or a simple old-fashioned gold brick. The appeal to people's emotions is often so subtly made that decisions of momentous importance to the nation are governed by whim and whimsy, simply because clever propaganda deprives people of their power to reason and think...
...known to the correcter. But in large courses in other fields where examinations are not marked blindly there is apt to exist injustice; knowing the owner of a paper, an instructor is influenced by personal feeling. At all times, however, a grade is subject to the correcter's whim and mood of the moment...
...this apocalyptic land everybody-the prospectors and stagecoach drivers, the medicine men, outlaws, sheriff, the hero with the silver-plated stock saddle-is a gentleman of color. No attempt is made to explain how so much pigment got all over the open spaces. It is there, palpably, by a whim of the Almighty, indulged with the liberal connivance of one Jed Buell, an independent Hollywood producer who learned his art from Mack Sennett...
...Street. Toward the center of the city, the Vagabond found himself engulfed in screaming traffic that approached from a million different directions at once. To the Mexican driver, the horn is far more important than the brake, and the velocity and direction of his vehicle depend solely on the whim of the man at the wheel. If Rhode Island motorists are the worst in the world, Mexicans are far and away the most idiosyncratic...