Friday, April 25, 2014

Five Things about Student Evaluations to Brighten Your Day

5 Things to Brighten Your Day
Despite the BS that May Get in Your Way
Student Evaluation Edition!

So, let's say I work in Sheldon Cooper's department at Direction State University.  Go Fighting Mascots!  Do you love my cheeky attempt at vagueness?

Anyway, it's course evaluation season and it's a little known fact that when students write down their course evaluation comments, there's a secretary locked in a dark basement typing up those comments for faculty to read later.  Maybe I'm not in a dark basement, and maybe I'm not locked away, but these comment sheets are kinda my life for two weeks straight and it's very entertaining!

1.  Smiley faces.  You would not believe how many smileys I get on these evaluations!  I'm no master at emojis, but apparently the students are.  And I include them…all of them.  Which brings me to number 2.

2.  Drawings.  Yes, students will draw pictures on their evaluation comments.  And these pictures have nothing to do with the subject.  I've seen a whale, sailboat, wizard's dual, cat, dozens of stick people, and a tiny portrait of the professor that was actually quite good.  Again, I include these!  I'll pull images from the internet, or draw the stick people in paint.  I was really tempted to scan the tiny portrait, but I settled for a smiley with a mustache.

3.  Exclamation points and other methods of showing intensity.  Again, if a students uses 8 exclamation points, I'm using 8 exclamation points.  And all the underlining, and sometimes caps lock, although I don't like doing that since it feels like I'm yelling.  Also, some people just write in capital letters, which brings us to number 4.

4.  Handwriting.  Oh my, our schools are not spending enough time on penmanship.  Most of the time I can figure out the sloppy word from context, but there are other times that I just have to type what I see, and it usually ends up like this:  gi$$henp.  Your guess is as good as mine!

5.  Funny comments.  Then there are the comments that make me laugh out loud.  These are usually comments to express how much they liked the course or what not, but just put in funny ways like #madgenuis #yolo.  I had to explain that one to a faculty member.  Another memorable one "You're full of win like Charlie Sheen".  Yeah, that totally makes sense.  But the winner was last year when I flipped over an evaluation and saw "Well hello there good looking".  Yes, an evaluation tried to pick me up.  I'm waiting for the day when an evaluation says "How you doin'?"  I might have to quit my job because it just can't get better than that!

That's my day!  Lots of interesting expressions of gratitude, smileys, drawings, and bad handwriting in my future.  Hope your Friday is filled with a similar amount of silliness!

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