Well, I survived my first week of classes, and I think I’m on track to make it through the next 14. Unfortunately, in these days of fast internet communication, one of my students has a blog, and has already posted a frank review of her classes. I’m assessed. It’s not good. I may have to flunk her, or maybe put her to work scrubbing the toilets.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Oh my, you didn’t even get a fair description! Just think of what a great challenge she’s given you now to really impress and enlighten her. Although she doesn’t sound too happy with school in general, so who knows.
I know you’re probably taking this in good humor, PZ, but in case it makes you feel better, many college students don’t really have, shall we say, particularly relevant ideas of what constitutes a good professor.
Why do you consider you’re “just terrible” a negative review? If you were dressed in black and wearing your squid arms, it could have been an expression of awed admiration.
8 a.m. classes. Yuck.
Philosophy of religion? No, no, no! Switch into an art class. Music! Anything but that. Do it now!
Doesn’t she see enough of you already?
Stephen @ 2: You are going to feel like such a dip when you find out. It’s okay, though; I’m sure it was an innocent mistake.
I have read that male students are concerned about fairness, but female students are concerned about being seen as individuals. I have, a number of times, had five minutes conversations with female students who were not doing well. Their performance immediately got better, because, I think, they felt I knew them as an individual.
First, Your student thinks for herself, which is to be encouraged. Secondly, I think she can be useful. Talk with her privately and as informally as you can. Ask her how you can be a better prof. You may actually learn something. If not, you can at least have made her less enthusiastic about being your enemy. She needs to be neutralized, because one active dissident can poison a whole classroom.
PZ, don’t take her calumny personally. I have daughters, & I know that teenage girls find fathers to be very embarassing, for no good reason at all, I’m sure.
Did she change her family name before enrolling?
Student in question: “My professor is just terrible.”
What an attitude! I blame the parents.
;-)
Actually, I know the prof in that class (who am I kidding? We know all of the professors at UMM), and she’s good. All this student needs to do is stick it out, she’ll learn lots.
And clearly, I need to spill the beans on an important little fact here: the student in question is actually my daughter, Skatje. I don’t think she’s going to be a problem, except in the global sense that teenaged daughters are always troublemakers.
Maybe she’s pissed at you for posting baby photos of her on the Interweb tubes.
My mother took introductory chemistry from my grandfather at a local, public college way back when. I don’t know how many students were in the class, but I can’t imagine that it was more than 40. However, she tried to hide the fact that she was the prof’s daughter, but slipped up and called him ‘Daddy’ one day. Much uncomfortableness occurred.
Once I cam across my reviews at that ratemyprofessor.com site or whatever it is. I was called “eccentric.” That I can live with. (Indeed, it’s worth fostering.)
I haven’t looked at ’em in the three years since then, but my aunt’s did for some reason. (That doesn’t mean I don’t look at evaluations, just not that site.)
Who does she want? Tamas Pataki?
I’m going to be my daughter’s eighth grade algebra teacher next year . . . I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
Funny!
I had already figured out she was related before I got to your comment where you gave that up.
PZ wrote: “And clearly, I need to spill the beans on an important little fact here: the student in question is actually my daughter, Skatje. I don’t think she’s going to be a problem, except in the global sense that teenaged daughters are always troublemakers.”
And where would we be without the troublemakers, eh?
Well, not in trouble, for starters.
Bob
Same comment I made at her site — your dept lets you do that? When I was teaching, my daughter was told she couldn’t take any courses where I’d be grading her. Department policy, if not the university. It was quite a relief for both of us, actually. No awkward moments in the classroom or at home.
My reaction when I saw one of the comments on her blog addressed to Skatje (which revealed who she is)was – she has her father’s sense of humor.
Best response I ever saw in a professor review (in answer to the question “what could the professor do to improve your classroom experience?”):
“Spontaneously combust.”
You may be getting close to one of the best days of your life. The day you know your child has surpassed you.
Oh hey, it’s Skatje’s blog. I knew who she was already; I just didn’t notice it was her blog. Innocent mistake, indeed.
But notice that I didn’t insult her specifically, just “many college students,” so I think I’ll escape any squid-style wrath from PZ.
Daughter,huh! You had it easy. First year teaching, first class ever (phyical geography class- elementary stuff), there , in the front row, waving like a mad woman is my MOTHER!!!! She’d decided to go back to school and hadn’t told me as a “surprise”. Surprised me all fucking right.
Fortunately she was pretty good at her work because, I tells ya, it would take a woman with much bigger kahoonas than I have to fail your MOTHER.
Best response I ever saw in a professor review (in answer to the question “what could the professor do to improve your classroom experience?”):
“Spontaneously combust.”
I think the comments I’m still fondest of on my own evaluations are these two:
“One cup of coffee, not two.”
“He was more interested in showing off how much he knows then [sic] in teaching.”
Oh, those two and:
“Jeff’s the man!”
You gotta keep a tight rein on those rugrats, I don’t care how old they are. Remind them who is paying for her education and you deserve a correspondingly high grade. Threats always work for me.
It took me a bit to catch on that it was Skatje that was the blogger.
I had a Korean professor for Calc I. Yes, hard to understand. And I was a math major.
Sorry, I didn’t get it either :) I’m new here, I can’t be blamed.
I TAed a course in which the professor’s son was a student. Generally it wasn’t a problem, though we went out drinking once and made each other swear we wouldn’t tell his dad.
Have you considered that she might have given you a good review because she had to?
The others might not be so nice! :-P
Word on the street is that she id getting help from Behe and Dembski, but it’s just a rumor! ;-)
Well, I think I see a clue:
Philosophy of Religion: … Maybe it’ll get exciting once we get into the actual arguments.
Ah ha, she despise you because you’re an atheist! – ? I bet I can get her “excited” in a way I dare any the rest of you to even try, with my onslaught of many-commaed (is that a word?) and multifariously-claused “Medieval” torture-us syntax and ostentatious “sophistry,” as inscrutable as it is haughty. Anselm would soil his shorts if he could see me in action defending the Being than which no greater can be conceived against the angry braying of hordes of militant and cynical doubters, etc. ad nauseum ad gloriam Dei. (BTW, for people who think I’m silly for feeling and arguing like an updated Medieval scholastic, you sure do like that old Bill Ockham a lot …)
Too funny, PZ.
Letyer kid know that I would trade places with her in a heartbeat. Pushing 50 here…empty-nested and finally going back to get my business undergrad…
And I love science…just not very good at it. Oh, I always get the low A…but damn I work for it. Not like the easy stuff (languages, business, lit, social sci that I absorb without much thinking).
I wish that my own doting Dad had been less gender-specific in what he considered appropriate fields of study for his girls…way back when. ‘Tis good to read your daughter’s blog, and know how much the world has changed.
Good thing you let the cat out of the bag PZ . . . I was just about to make some derogatory comment about her! :)
CEILING CAT SEZ: “IMAGINABILITY. I HAS IT.”
my father is a professor of mathematics at the local state university, and i took a calculus with him once while i was still in high school. lead to an interesting performance review at the end of the semester:
availability of professor: “could always find the professor when i had a question, even after office hours.”
or something to that effect.
I thought it was *slightly* odd, that you were revealing a student’s opinion to people who would be sure to disagree with it. Then I got to the first comment about daughters and got what was going on. Good natured family teasing.
The trick to embarrassing your daughter is not to show her boyfriends pictures of her as a nude 3 year old, but pictures of her as a nude 9 year old. Because when you’re nine you know what you’re doing, and you’re doing it deliberately.
If it don’t make her turn blazing crimson from head to toe, then it’s not revenge. :eg:
I was worrying about my comment being inappropriate, but after reading #39 (and feeling my teacherly eyes glaze over), I would just like to remark that perhaps Skatje should delegate the cleaning of toilets to JAD, who is leaving his self-serving links, spam-like, on her site.
What is up with these yahoos who think that it could ever be appropriate to involve the families of their ideological opponents? They mystify me.
Ah, the worm turns.
Bet you’re thinking you should have increased her pocket money when she asked when she was 12..or perhaps it was a pony when she was 10. Whatever…
My mother once told me that she had to be nice to us because we were the ones who were going to pick her nursing home when she was old and senile.
They get you back in the end, remember that…it just sucks that our generation didn’t have the internet to publically annoy our parents.
Brownian, was that a promise to not tell the prof a) that his son had been drinking, or b) drinking with you, or c) that the student was, unbeknownst to him, his son?
arachnophilia, I hope it was clear the prof. was your father, or people might wonder what that note really meant! (i.e., maybe fodder for Jay Leno …)
Remember that these are self-reported polling results. That means these books listed were in some way memorable to the students (liked it OR hated it.)
The data points are actually the top ten books remembered by students who are both Facebook savvy and anal enough to enter this data. Lots of selection biases going on there…
Some people do learn things better from a textbook. I’m sure that gives us a label from the (?)Meyer Test. It really doesn’t have anything to do from the teacher.
I’m sure that gives us a label from the (?)Meyer Test. It really doesn’t have anything to do from the teacher.
Maybe a teacher could have taught you grammar.
Sheesh…I said I was sorry…But hell, maybe you have a point. &:*D
Ah, crap…I meant WITH…shit. I’m sorry.
Drinking while posting…bad idea!
We all make errors, but that one was kind of funny. Don’t discount the role of teachers (in selecting your curricula and readings, in developing pedagogical tools that also work as evaluation guides, etc.) People have different styles, yes, but don’t overlook some of the seemingly little things we do that actually turn out pretty significant.
My unsolicited advice:
When she raises her hand to ask a question, ignore her.
“#4:
[i]8 a.m. classes. Yuck.
Philosophy of religion? No, no, no! Switch into an art class. Music! Anything but that. Do it now!”[i]
– I did Phil of Religion (and History of same as well) – really interesting, just underlines how phiosophically bankrupt it all really is! – i mean the arguments just SUCK!
#21:
[i]”Best response I ever saw in a professor review (in answer to the question “what could the professor do to improve your classroom experience?”):
“Spontaneously combust.””[i]
Best thing [i]ever[i] saw in a chemistry lecture: The lecturer set himself, a desk and the floor on fire!