More Art Than Science: Evaluating the Evaluations

Like many law professors, I am in the process of handing out evaluations this week and this posting on Reddit from a fellow law professor’s class caught my eye. Before leaving the classroom for the completion of evaluations, the professor apparently put up on the screen his favorite ding on evaluations with a student who wrote: “I don’t wear my seatbelt driving to school because I want to die before I make it to this class.”

Evaluations can be a challenge to putting a term of fulfillment or frustration into a brief statement.

My two favorite evaluations relate to the same professor at Northwestern University Law School who relished his bad evaluations and framed some in his office. One evaluation referred to his short height and (I will leave out his name) read “I am convinced that in 50 years they will discover that Napoleon as a [blank] problem.” Another evaluation occurred during a term when he had to wear a neck brace following a tennis injury and read simply “I am glad you hurt your neck.”

I was also told of a certain Columbia law professor who used to mock students eager to give him bad evaluations. You will have to forgive the profanity in this one. While leaving the class to allow them to complete their evaluations, he turned to his students and said “do me a favor this year and at least get your spelling right. There are two r’s in ‘arrogant.'” Without missing a beat, a student in the back of class immediately yelled out in response, “Thanks, but are there two s’s in ‘asshole’?”

Have you given or received a flaming evaluation?