Well, it's that time of year again: teaching evaluations are coming up. They start in early March and continue for the next three weeks. The amount of labor my institution expends on them would probably pay for a dozen tenure-track positions.
Now, let's be clear: I get good teaching evaluations, mostly because I'm a total whore when it comes to marking. I give 'em what they want for their money. Everybody else is inflating grades like blow-up sex dolls at a frat party, so what difference does it make? Keep the customer satisfied! But, anyway, I for one have had it with being "evaluated" by underachieving vodka-cooler guzzling teenagers who think that good movies star Adam Sandler by definition.
And I want to know this: I teach a first-year course, so somebody explain to me how a seventeen year old, less than a year out of high school, whose only experience with books is in the form of facebooks, is qualified to evaluate my teaching abilities? I wouldn't hire most of them to mow my lawn.
