Most professors are required to give course evaluations, and most course evaluations tend to blur together. Nearly every single time I read over the student comments, though, there are one or two that stand out, sometimes for their rancor or their unabashed enthusiasm but more often for the, ahem, rather bracing lack of self-consciousness on the part of their authors. My most recent favorite* belongs decidedly in that category.
The student wrote, and I quote, "When she was having fun and joking with us, I felt like sitting there wasn't that bad and this was fun."
My first instinct was to laugh, and laugh I did, mightily. Alone in my office. In the faculty workroom as I printed out worksheets for the first day of the new quarter. And again when I got home and told the story to my husband. Oh, sure, I was a little indignant about the backhanded compliment and, you know, that the student presumed that just sitting there was enough.
But then it hit me that the kid was right, not about my Spanish class in particular, but about life and how sometimes it is enough to see the small moments clearly and measure them accurately.
*This quarter’s runner-up was the tersely worded “She’s legit.”
