The mediocrity of course evaluations

Perhaps it’s just me, but in my three years at this University, “dead” isn’t the descriptor I’d prescribe to this last week of classes.

By the time you’re reading this, it will be Friday and you will have survived. So congratulations. But even when teachers decide to drop a proverbial ton of work on us before finals, the excess drudgery still isn’t my least preferred element of dead week. That belongs to course evaluations.

I don’t dislike course evaluations because I find them to be a waste of time or because I feel as if my judgment of a class or teacher doesn’t matter. I believe those statements are true, but they’re not my reasoning.

I loathe course evaluations because of how often I hear students around me in class proclaiming, “Oh man. I’m going to tear this teacher to shreds.”

Course evaluations are the one time we as students think we can stick it to our teacher, and by extension, stick it to the University at large.

I’ll be honest. I’ve had my share of piss-poor educators at IU. After all, they can’t all be gems. But I’ve never detested a teacher so much I felt the need to blacken every “strongly disagree” bubble on their evaluation.

I’ve attempted to make any and all criticism constructive. You’ve probably heard the sentiment that teachers learn just as much from us as we learn from them ad nauseum, but I think it’s valid.

Ripping them apart on a course evaluation is just a waste of your unnecessary negative energy.

Don’t allow the notion that these evaluations are anonymous to let you turn into the equivalent of a nasty Internet troll.

But do these course evaluations really matter, anyways? I highly doubt that during Christmas break my fall semester teachers will be hopelessly combing through their stack of evaluations, pluck mine from the pile, scan it once and see I’ve handed them the key to unlocking their success as an educator.

A solid three-fourths of the teachers I’ve had here at IU have handed the evaluations out while trying to maintain the same tried and true methodology of handling a class they’ve taught for years.

Pardon me if my inner nihilist is showing, but I just refuse to envision I could be making that much of a difference to the IU education system. It would be nice if I was, but a pointless white and brown survey is hardly the way to go about it.