I know it's not funny, Wants2fly, but I had to laugh when I finished reading your post because I couldn't, right off the bat, remember "the" wrong word/situation! I think the students themselves and the associate dean and everyone else except you probably has my same problem. It's probably along the line of "don't think about pink elephants" where you immediately have to think about pink elephants. The example choice was only obvious, stood out, to you.

If something gets "stuck" like that I remember what I read once about how profession jingle/song writers get a tune out of their head? They either sing the song all the way through (completion) or they "replace" it with another song (and hope that one doesn't get stuck :-) Give up on the evaluation and work on the "next" thing is what I'd suggest.

Get involved/thinking about something more interesting to you or, pretend the situation was like a dream story and replace the offending part with an example you prefer, telling yourself the whole experience start to finish with the better example/word? Evaluated poorly the student's opinions would be dyslogistic, pejorative or derogatory to the teacher :-)

"I am proud of my good exam results except for the failure in one subject where I was unfortunately rather ill on the day of the examination." (even other people use a school example so not so uncommon for you to, despite being a teacher?)

http://changingminds.org/explanation...rving_bias.htm