Hi there everyone!

This week, the associate dean visited one of my classes for an evaluation. His written evaluation form is perfect, in every category!

I am never at my best when I am being evaluated. To top it off, the associate dean has physical characteristics and habits that resemble that of my ex-husband, a very powerful personality in my life.

My class was unusually silent and uncooperative. Part of the lesson was on the self-serving bias. I used an example of a teacher who is evaluated poorly by her students and says the students' opinions are stupid (poor language choice), but if students evaluate the professor positively, she attributes it to being a good teacher.

Obviously the fact that I was being evaluated at that very moment influenced my choice of example!

After the presentation, I was disappointed about how the class turned out. The dean was reassuring, saying that my teaching methodologies were sound. He suggested that our commuter students are thinking about lunch, not lessons, during an 11-12:15 class. Moreover, it is early the semester, so they are not yet comfortable with me. He completely attributed everything that went wrong to outside factors and not to me.

He relayed through another professor that he had "enjoyed" the class. I have mastered a lot of research in my field, and I have good recall, so I often can impress my peers with the breadth of my knowledge.

My office-mate said that he thought the dean was more interested in how I handled the quiet-class situation than in how my class responded, which is often out of our control.

So, okay, I understand self-serving bias. Attributing our failures and defects to outside factors can be a de-motivating influence that makes us irresponsible and hinders self-growth.

I also am familiar with Martin Seligman's learned optimism research suggests that those of us who beat ourselves up can be happier if we add a little bit of self-serving bias to our formula, especially if those outside factors are realistic attributions, as they are in this case.

Now it's 72-hours after the evaluation, and I still flashback to that ONE EXAMPLE that had a poor language choice and was maybe just a tad too personal -- out of an hour-plus class, 6.5 classroom hours a week, plus the prep time etc. Then I remind myself of the good strokes, but it sounds like equivocation and excuse-making to me, honestly.

How do I stop this?