Evaluation

An academic life is not for those with thin skins or have egos easily bruised. Our lives are full of evaluation. Every course gets honest and brutal feedback from each student enrolled. Often we have peers come to observe our teaching performance. We are expected to regularly send off our writing to others with the intent of receiving criticism (hopefully, mixed in with some positives!). We submit proposals to funding agencies where they are picked apart, sometimes word by word, by a discerning panel of other academics.

Of course, we sit on the other side of the table as well. We hand out grades to students. We review journal articles and book chapters. We sit on grant review panels.

Most of us will admit to having a little ritual for reading either student evaluations or peer reviews. The ritual often involves alcohol. Comments like "I'd rather run naked through the Quad in January than ever take another course from this professor" go down much better with a little pinot noir. We often save those review envelopes for the end of the day, for a time with quiet and no interruptions. I know I have to read them quickly first, then set them aside for a few day before I can go back and really digest what has been said.

Hopefully, what we learn from reading evaluations of our own work helps us be better, and more sensitive, evaluators of others.