Mirror Mirror: Professor Evaluations

It's getting close to the end of term and there's a lot of evaluating going on. Term papers are being handed in, presentations are in full swing and, if you're a MacEwan student, harassing emails reminding you to fill out your professor evaluations are clogging your inbox.

Unlike during my time at the UofA, MacEwan conducts their instructor evaluations online via their student portal. Oh the modern technology! I actually miss the scantron bubble paper and nervousness that came with slamming your jerk prof while he watched you do it. While the method has changed, my attitude toward instructor evaluations have not. 

I know that my opinion as a student means nothing to administrators. I know that my evaluation will have zero merit when it comes to a contract renewal. If it did, I wouldn't hear nearly as many horror stories about some of the psycotic ego-maniacs who continue to have teaching jobs. But I do know that the profs read them, and I'd like to believe that there are some who actually care about being a good teacher. In my experience, giving a shit as a teacher is inversely proportional to having a Phd, which seems to be an increasingly important qualification at a new university like MacEwan.

So I will do my professor evaluations. Not because they have any weight with the university, but because they should have weight with the professors. I will let some of my instructors know that they have made a powerful impact on my abilities as a writer. I will let some of my instructors know that they did a great job teaching a poorly designed course. And I will let some of my professors know that they probably shouldn't be teaching. Or be allowed around young people. At all.

On the flip side, I'd love it if my instructors could give me an evaluation. Yes, they mark my assignments and provide some degree of feedback but a mark only evaluates how well you jumped through the hoops, not how well you learned. I would love to hear what they actually think of my cranky mature student ways. If you were a disengaged corpse of a student, don't you think it would be helpful to know?

Assigned Reading: Links for Thought

Things have been very busy these days, which I'm going to use as an excuse for posting a bit inconsistently. Every class I have has multiple quizzes and assignments that are overlapping and it's causing me great misery. Whatever happened to mid-terms? When did these go out of fashion in favour of mini-midterms disguised as quizzes and presentations worth almost a quarter of your grade? 

Anyway, I thought I'd post some links to a couple of articles that have me thinking. I've got longer responses to each of them in the pipeline but I figured I'd share early.

• 'An A+ student regrets his grades' - from the Globe and Mail. 

I think about this one every time I see a first-year student fresh out of high school considering dropping a course because they got a bad mark on their first assignment. 

•  'Job seeker on Gen Y's struggles: 'I didn't think I'd be here at 30'' - Globe and Mail

When I first read this one I wanted to comment so badly "Move to Alberta!" but at the same time I understand wanting to be able to make a living where you choose to live. But seriously, this dude should move to Alberta. Aside from this, the point that had me saying "Amen!" was the advice to 18 year olds to take a year off before going to university. I wish I had taken a year off (or 5) but I'm not sure my 17 year old self would have listened. She was pretty ambitious and stubborn.

• ''Cunt' Should Not Be a Bad Word' from Jezebel.com 

Alright, language nerds. Go to town on this one. My grammar class last term had this very debate and I still don't know how I feel about it. I wrote my paper on whether or not 'slut' could be reclaimed and one of my arguments was that it had a better chance at reclamation because it didn't specifically refer to femaleness the way that 'cunt' does. Ugh. I actually just had a visceral reaction typing the word. Why?

Thoughts? Feelings? Deep need to discuss over beer? Feel free to leave a comment.

Also, you can now follow Over/Undergrad on Twitter! Ah technology....