Is there a Monday Thirsty? How about an Afternoon Gulp?Ah, student evaluations. They are enclosed in a manila envelope,
small enough to fit in my briefcase and lighter than BallisticOther's shrimpy kitten, yet they perch on the edge of my desk and fester and gradually morph into the mammoth in the room. I both dread and anticipate them with not a little curiosity, because the originality and spunk with which they accuse me of any and all psychological crimes against nature are the two qualities missing from their papers all semester long.
I ask you, is there such a thing as selective application of critical thinking? Or have I succeeded in my endeavours at long last and the only outlet for the students' newfound skills is the evaluation? Perhaps I should hand out MadLibs first, but that would only result in claims that the Professor bibbles cucumbers. Try explaining that to the department chair.
Today, armed with hot chocolate and a gardenia flower BallisticOther insisted on sticking in my fedora (I am imitating Indiana Jones, if he was a teaching assistant professor, balding, and was pleasantly plump instead of abs-tastic and dashing), I finally reached over and opened that envelope. And, among other, less fun scribblings, here is what I found:
Who looks like a pineapple and makes me go to sleep?
BallisticNoter, PhD!
Boring and Weird and Dauntless is he [I don't think s/he quite got what 'dauntless' means in Lochinvar]
BallisticNoter, PhD!
I'll take it as a compliment; look, they notice my doctorate! And I'm dauntless! No, seriously, what am I supposed to do with this? So, here's the thirsty:
Q: What is the weirdest, craziest,
downright batty evaluation you ever got?
I was once accused of requiring students to understand too much biology in the course.
ReplyDeleteThe only biology I used in the humanities/social sciences course was a rudimentary understanding that bees lived in hives! And that was in the first week, as part of explaining something fairly non-biological.
But that was just TOO MUCH!
I was once accused of requiring students to look at too many sculptures of Roman emperors. IN A ROMAN ART CLASS.
DeleteUnwelcome but not too strange: fashion advice ("I hate when you wear an orange tie with the blue shirt. It makes me think you're wearing a denim shirt"). Um, thanks Joan Rivers.
ReplyDeleteAlleged insult but glorious truth: "Dr. Brother makes simple things difficult".
Dual-Direction Hyperboles: Angry student: "Dr. Brother is the worst professor I have ever had"; Not-So-Angry Student: "Dr. Brother is the best professor I have ever had".
All this makes me the worst-best professor who wears denim shirts and performs degree of difficulty alchemy in the classroom.
Oh, the fashion police! I had one who thought "his hair flops over his forehead and distracts me. He should just shave his head." WTF?
Delete"She wears too many scarves" (This was winter in Colorado! Hell yeah, I wore a scarf daily!).
Delete"She clearly plays favorites" (because my friend, who was an A student got an A, and I, a C student, got a C! Outrage!)
ReplyDeleteAlso, "she drinks a Coke Zero during every class... is she advertising the product?"
I got that years ago about Pepsi. Well, there was a Pepsi machine on the way to my classroom and I am a caffineaholic.
DeleteExam questions unfair--you have to know the material...
ReplyDeleteI had that one last year!
DeleteSomething to the effect of: "Every time she opens her mouth, I want to vomit."
ReplyDeleteThere was the time a bunch of sorority sisters took my class together, and decided that I was "too hard" and "didn't give As" at all (in fact, several students in that class did earn As; they just didn't happen to be members of that group). The content of the written comments was pretty predictable, if somewhat more vitriolic than usual (as were the numbers; several students gave me straight zeros, which definitely lowered the course average significantly). The medium in which the comments were written, on the other hand, was unusual: glitter pen, with additional colors used for underlining, highlighting, and exclamation points. It was quite a work of art, though it did probably (thank goodness!) undermine the author's credibility a bit.
ReplyDelete"She showed way too many Youtube videos."
ReplyDeleteI showed one the entire semester. It had to do with the topic I was teaching.
This semester they told me to my face that I didn't show enough videos. We can't win.
DeleteStudent Alpha:
ReplyDeleteAll she ever did was teach from the textbook. It would be nice for a professor to bring something to class from outside the textbook.
Student Zeta:
She hardly even used the textbook.
Alpha and Zeta were enrolled in the same course. Unless, through a shift in the time space continuum, there were in the same course in different worlds -- every day except for evaluation day.
I got lots of those while I was teaching.
DeleteGuess which set of comments were considered valid whenever I got called into the department head's office?
Guess which set were emphasized when the dean got involved?
Guess who never investigated to see which set was true?
There were times at the institution I was at that I was sure that I had entered the Twilight Zone.
"He is clearly a sexist and a misogynist, ignoring questions from female students and favouring males."
ReplyDeleteThis was from a course, where 100% (and I mean ONE HUNDRED percent) of students who asked questions in class, or answered my hypothetical questions to the class, or visited me during office hours, or sent me emails asking about course material, were female students. There was never a single instance where a male student asked a question, and I never mentioned this to the class (e.g. "come on! enough from the women, let's hear from the men!"). But, apparently I "clearly" had it in for women when it came to classroom participation...
I was lambasted for choosing hard desks for them to sit on in the classroom.
ReplyDelete"Professor Cynic talks too much about her husband." At that time, I was not married, nor did I talk about my Significant Other in class.
I don't know if this counts as weirdest, craziest, or downright battiest, but the most pointed evaluation comment I got inspired a post of its own.
ReplyDeleteCurrently, I grapple with students who apologize for not meeting "my" standards when what they mean are the standards of the university-wide writing rubric, the APA Publication Manual, general accepted practices of the profession, and, well, basic common sense.
"Horrible Meany Prof deliberately uses big words to intimidate us."
ReplyDeleteLet's see... "deliberately" = five syllables.
I have also been chided on my 'difficult to understand accent.' which I acquired growing up in the Northeast US (somewhere between Washington, DC. and Albany, NY)
Ah ha... they perceive you to be a Yankee! Where I went to college, that alone would be enough to get you a bad evaluation.
DeleteWe'll, this didn't happen to me, but it did happen to the guy down the hall. . . .
ReplyDeleteA student made a formal complaint to the Dean that "he teaches us stuff we don't already know."
Dr. Kittycat is too short and I can't she her when she demonstrates stuff.
ReplyDeleteWritten by a student in PAT FROM PEORIA's algebra class:
ReplyDelete"Professor Sydney from Shelbyville continually misquoted the textbook. Just by reading the text, I now know more about biology than the professor does."
"I learned nothing in this class except her values, which are liberal and democratic"--in a class where I never once mentioned politics or anything that could be thought of as overtly political. But I did teach the occasional African-American or female author, so oops, I guess that counts.
ReplyDeleteWe had just finished three weeks of African literature when a student complained, out loud in front of the whole class, that we were reading too many works by "certain color authors." I didn't have to say a word; the rest of the class schooled her.
ReplyDeleteBut my all-time favorite course evaluation included a lengthy rant complaining that I forced the class to read pornography. (Because any literature that admits the existence of sex is necessarily pornographic.)
I got called "The bomb dot com" a few year ago. I think it was supposed to be a compliment?
ReplyDelete"The lecturer is a joke. He sets everyone up to fail." This class had 90 students, two failed.
ReplyDelete