My mediocre Ohio college assigns all tenure-track folks a certain number of classes each term which must be evaluated through a standard 20 question Scantron form. The same idiotic questions that most of you are aware of are on there - "Professor ended class on time." "Professor treated me with respect." Yeah, sure, because that's a two way street.Anyway, I've always hated evaluations and have never learned one tiny idea from doing them. Yet, I am trying to appease my master and so off I go into my class yesterday with the big brown envelope of shame.
And the tittering started, "Dr. Furlong, we get to grade YOU today!" "I'm going to TEAR you up," said one particularly meaty meathead.
And I just tried to ignore it, because this is how it usually goes.
"Now you'll see what it's like to get a big F!" "I'm so glad I came to class today; I was going to ditch, but this will be more fun."
And then as I read the canned instructions and put the course identifying info on the board, one student said, "5 bucks to anyone who writes that Dr. Furlong sometimes farts in his lectures." And then the big laughs really started.
I turned to them with what I can only imagine was a look of shock. And then I did it.
I went out among them and took the Scantrons and question sheets off the desks. Each looked at me with surprise as I did it, and one of my meatheads actually held his paper behind his back until he could see I wasn't smiling. I got all the sheets, dramatically tore them up and stuffed them in the envelope which I put in my briefcase.
"Yeah," I said. "I'll see you next week."
And for once I was the first one out of the door. I don't know what if anything will happen about this, but if one of us can stand up against this bullshit, then we can all stand up.
