Student Evals.

When I ran by some ideas for changes to my sex class with the art kids, their content comments boiled down to “Less religion, more trannies.”

And you know, they’re right! 

Next time around, I’m going to re-weight the material and de-emphasize some of the religion stuff, and emphasize stuff about the science of sex (with discussion focusing on moral claims, e.g. “We’re essentially bonobos”), transsexuality, and the history of gayness in the U.S.

Also, I had one student who gave negative comments on the online eval forms, including one of my all-time favorites: “Interesting material covered, but taught in an overwhelming, annoying, and neurotic fashion.”

I quoted that to my one (Mormon) colleague, and he just broke into a big smile and gave me a thumbs-up.

Unfortunately, in the online printout of the evals, that student’s comments are the very first in response to every question.  In one, she (I think I know who it is) said I was “controlling”, which I think is in reference to how I focused assignments and feedback on certain academic/analytical ways of writing, or maybe my flunking that one student; she had said in response to another question that I wasn’t open to other ways of doing things, and that I randomly failed someone “for no reason”. 

That one comment does bother me a bit, since it makes me come off as power-mad (and it is something that certainly sticks out at the top of a row of comments).