Sent. and... Found (question abt sending student evals in job applications too)

Tuesday was a stressful day because I had to fulfill one of the requests made by "my possible future employers in whom lie all the hope of my husband's future employers to have him accept the job:" send them some student evaluations.

Last week I wrote some syllabi and that was loads of fun, very intellectually stimulating. While I looked for materials for the syllabi, I also looked (half-heartedly because I just hate them so much) for my student evaluations, opening at least four boxes in the garage. After I sent the syllabi on Thursday, I forgot about the evaluations and this whole weird "being 'pitched' for a job that doesn't really exist" thing over the weekend (someone has to take a break from negative things sometimes, right?), but of course K had to remind me of it on Tuesday morning :-(.

It turns out that the evaluations were in an easy place to find -- in our filing cabinet, behind my dissertation stuff. I don't have my "regular semester" class evaluations, but I have those for the six classes I taught for continuing ed (mostly in the summer and in winter sections) and so I had to read them all and select a sample to send. That was a rough trip down memory lane. Some of my thoughts:

"How can they have sad that? Sure, it's true that I'm scattered and stuff, but didn't they realize I had a four month old baby and was teaching that difficult 200 level class for the very first time on my own?"

"Oh, that was that class I taught in the winter, when I was almost 8 months pregnant."

"Phew! I'm glad those students didn't think I was that bad -- that was my very first semester teaching on my own. One of them even thought I was cool, great! I was newly pregnant on that class too..."

"Why oh why did this one student have to blame my 'scatteredness' -- probably due to some level of ADD -- on me being a speaker of English as a second language? I was OUTRAGED when my useless advisor pulled that same "BS" [and I don't ever swear!] on me when I was working on my dissertation prospectus -- BLAH!!!"

For some classes, most evaluations were negative and I decided not to include totally negative ones -- that would be suicide, no? I did include some "balanced" ones (including the English as second language one -- as far as criticism goes, this may be annoying, but not very negative). In the end, I scanned and sent (one PDF file for each class) the overall quantitative results page for each of the six classes plus two to four evaluations.  Is that something that is done?

Question: those of you who send student evaluations as part of job applications, how do you do it? Do you send the whole packet for one class or do you do a selection? How is this supposed to work? I'm clueless, really.

This is the second time I've had to do this. The first time was back in 2006 and I went to my department in Massachusetts, looked at all of them, and copied a sample (and STUPIDLY, sent the original copies, never copied them for my record -- at least I couldn't find them anywhere, but I'm pretty sure I sent the only ones I had). In order to have evaluations for my "regular" classes I have to go to MA again and copy them out of the department's secretary cabinet files. I hope I don't have to do that again someday. I'd love the excuse to go and visit, though!! :-)

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OK, now to the "Foud" part of the title. If I were a good writer, ok, good at editing, this material would have made for a nice, moving post, but no, this is what you get. :-(

Looking at those evals (I don't like reading them, it's another of the myriad of things that I should talk about in therapy if I ever get to afford have some therapy) made me get into a weird funk for the rest of the day. I was feeling better and then last night I found something that was quite amazing!

I was selecting papers from the trash for recycling -- I had found and discarded old student exams, papers, etc, useless things that moved THREE TIMES* with us since 2004 because we never had the time to tackle them in our moves. While pulling papers out of the bin I came across this thick, handmade paper envelope (I've always loved handmade paper, I actually want to make some with my boys). When it opened, it contained the most beautiful note from a student I've ever read or received. And it was from the very last term I taught a Cont. Ed. class (Summer of 2003) and whose evaluations I had read two days before.

The student (whose name I couldn't really make up) was very sweet and wrote things such as:

This was one of the best classes I've ever attended at the university. It was harder than I expected, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It was really, really good. Thank you for your time with us and your understanding.

That was nice, but look at this!

As for you, a student, a mother, a wife and a teacher -- you're pulling it off splendidly. You're going to make both the university and the people in your life very proud.

And in the end:

You're going to go far, I'm proud of all you've accomplished. It may get hard but hang in there. You're going places**. :-)  

This was just so amazing to find and encouraging to read! And such a contrast to some of the evaluations I'd read on Tuesday. Truly soul comforting. It's moments like these that make all the effort we put into teaching worth-while. When K saw it he said something like: "See? You deserve this, you don't need to be upset with the negative evaluations." True. Still hard, though. Hopefully over the years my skin will get thicker and thicker. Meanwhile, I'll be hoping for more positive feedback like this lovely note I found.

*2004: I had a newborn, my parents packed our house in MA with K.

2007: we packed everything with the help of some friends and in a hurry into "Flex boxes."

2010: friends helped load furniture and some previously packed boxes, but everything else was packed by yours truly and her husband and carried into the trailer.

The worst part of thinking about moving again? I already know ahead of time they pay only 4K and that's not enough, I'm pretty sure, to pay for someone to pack our stuff. We'll have to do all the packing again (movers will just load the truck and unload -- they'll only deal with big furniture and previously packed boxes). And we had SWORN never to do it again and not to move if the moving expenses were not completely covered for a DECENT move in which movers packed our stuff (books, kitchen stuff, clothes).

**It was as Children's Literature class.