Funny thing

I had an experience of how a normal person apparently responds to criticism.

I am a college teacher, and every semester, I get back anonymous evaluations of my teaching from my students. They are never as good as I want them to be (which is to say, they are medium, about C or B), and I obsess over them. I have a bunch that I am saving for the weekend, so that I can read them on Friday, and have at least 48 hours to recover and get my confidence back up, before I go back in the classroom again.

Okay, so nothing funny so far. I share an office with another profesor, a guy whose about 20 years younger than I, a really family man with three kids and a high-powered lawyer wife. He's laughing when I walk into the office, with the evaluations in his hands, and he says, "Listen to this one: 'There were questions on the tests from the textbook, and he didn't cover everything in class.' Imagine that. The nerve of me -- to expect students to read the textbook!"

Me, I read that, and I think, "How can I cover the entire textbook during the class periods? That's the not possible, but there must be a way. How can please every single last one of them, no matter how absurd the demand?"

His laughter certainly was an eye opener about how a person with self-esteem might respond!

Thanks for sharing that. I like his attitude.

I am currently a student, and when I fill out those evaluations, I try to aim for around the middle. I like most of my instructors, and I am an A student (I had a 4.0 up until a couple of weeks ago), so I'm not usually a problem child in class or anything like that. I realize that if they weren't pretty good, they probably wouldn't be teaching graduate students. But I figure that if I habitually gave out top marks, there would be no way to differentiate the teachers that I really like the best. And the ones I like the best probably aren't the same ones that someone else likes best. One of my instructors has told me that I am "a harsh grader" as he habitually includes an assignment that involves grading something he has written, and I do look at those critically. I figured that the errors and omissions were put there deliberately for us to find. Or maybe he didn't write the pieces at all - I don't know.

I hope this helps too. And I hope that you don't take your students' evaluations too hard. Students just may not be sure what the appropriate standard is for evaluating teachers. Or for some it might be their chance to give out grades to match some of the ones they have received. You never know.

Rap

That's a good one wants2fly. We should learn something from that guy. He has a good attitude.
Thanks for writing that!

So glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for words of moderation, Rapunzel.