Dream of student

 There was a fairly intense dream about a grad student presenting his/her work in a way that didn't make sense. The idea was that the four parts of the dissertation could be read in any order: 1234, 4321, 1324, etc... That wasn't the objectionable part of it, but that the dissertation had no content: it wasn't going to be "about" anything at all, and had no title. I was arguing with the student and with a colleague, who thought the plan was fine, and then told me student had pancreatic cancer...  When I woke up, I realized that the student I thought I was dreaming of did have a valid topic...