...and I suck, apparently. I'm (on average) a full mark lower than the departmental average, and this is outside the standard deviation. Good thing I'm looking into work outside the academy. In fact, despite the fact that I just got an article accepted for publication, I'm strongly considering the benefits of staying out of the academic world.

This is my last semester of teaching as a graduate student. Next semester, I'll be acting as a research assistant, so really, when I apply for jobs, I have to submit these course evals as evidence of my teaching. Never mind that during my observations I performed quite well, or that in my 101 sections I typically got excellent evaluations. Juniors and seniors hate me for the same reasons that my freshman students liked me as an instructor: I am unsympathetic to those who refuse to try to learn the material for themselves. I will not give you a "study guide." Come to class and take notes. Do the portfolio entries I asked you to do. It is interesting that students in my classes who come, take notes, and do the work generally tend to perform far better than those who ask for study guides.

Freshmen tend to be a little more accepting of the fact that this is college and they are adults. They're new at this, and expect different things when they get to school. Juniors and seniors don't like not being able to coast like they have for two years already. Why is this? You might think that juniors and seniors are more open to being challenged as adults who need to be responsible for learning and understanding the material before them. That is, after all, what college is all about, right? Apparently not. They want a formula they can use to make an easy A, one that allows them to keep a great GPA for that grad school application, not realizing that they'll fail utterly once they get to grad school if they haven't taken the time to build that foundation of understanding.

Anyway... forget it. I've got decent evaluations from past courses, just not when I've taught upperclassmen.