Collective disgust

There was some kind of Revenge of the Grad Students episode in my Thursday night class this week. That *awful* teacher we've got handed out the course evaluations -- within half an hour of having handed out yet another round of capriciously graded treatment plans.

We are supposed to be caring professionals, self-aware and empathetic and working to encourage the strengths in others rather than to shit all over them and break them down.

But you know what? I think must of us went for the major arteries.

Seriously.

On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being a way of screaming "THIS SUCKS!" and 5 being what one really ought to expect for $610 a credit hour (or, $1,830 for this class in other words), I rated that teacher with a bunch of 1s and 2s. She managed one or two 3s and perhaps there was a 4 for something emprically validated, such as ease of access in e-mail or something. But for the most part, WHAM, BAM, NO THANK YOU, MA'AM! I smacked that lady up one side and down another.

And I was not alone.

Anonymous blogging classmate No. 1 said to me, "I have *never* rated a teacher so low in my entire life." (She also wrote in her "Other Comments" section, "I have never seen a teacher generate such collective seething resentment among her students.")

I'm there with ya, sis. And so was YogaGirl and The One We Don't Like and The One Guy and The Hailey's Mom and The Quiet Woman and The Puppy and ... it goes on. Really, it was just The Debutante, I suspect, who gave the teacher good marks, and that leaves me with a big old question mark (and a philosophical shrug: To each her own).

The back of the evaluation has a section for comments, and because I was so wretchedly annoyed and disappointed, I barely had any civil words. So I kept it short, making such comments as the following:

Q: How can this course be improved?
A: Start from scratch, and get a new instructor.

Q: What could improve this instructor's teaching?
A: Stop treating adult students like they're teenagers (propz to annonymous blogging classmate for reminding me to note that).

Q: Is there anything else you'd like to say?
A: I wish I had something more constructive, but I am very disappointed.

People were writing and snickering up a storm, and one of the students, upon finishing writing her peace, said as she turned it in, "I do not regret a word."

Nor do I. It is, without question, the single biggest disappointment of my very personally expensive graduate school existence. In some sick way, it's nice to know my experience of misery was widely shared, but it's also very discouraging to know that so many of us got such poor instruction.

Truth be told, we should all be taking the class again with a competent instructor and a meaningful syllabus. But we're not going to do that. Instead, we'll all just truck out into the world and have some supervisor at some mental health facility call us on our shit someday. Or we'll all just swap what we learned about treating adults with what we never learned about treating children, and make due -- until someone calls us on our shit.

That totally sucks.

But let me say this: There's only ONE MORE FUCKING CLASS. My little self-aware ass is very aware of this fact. And also looking forward to the after party. To which the teacher will not be invited. So we can bash her even more.

Considering we're all caring and empathetic and shit, right?

Just not with her. Right now, we're all about feeling the pain of one another.