At my editor’s insistence (and looking for something to do while my nails dried), I went to www.MyProfessorSucks.com in the hope that I would gleefully read all the nasty things written about scores of professors here at F.U.
There were neither nasty things nor scores of professors. The following is a list of all Fairfield professors who have been “evaluated” on this site and their subsequent “grades”: Kim Bridgeford (A+); Don Gibson (A); Phil Lane (A); Thomas Regan (A+) and Jim Simon (A). While I am pleased to see the students are very happy with several faculty members, my expectations of reading nasty little bon mots were crushed.
I then decided to explore the rest of the website and was subsequently disappointed. The columnists on the site were not funny, and I would hardly call the posts “hilarious”—”This guy looks just like Bluto from Popeye! No kidding!” Monty Python it ain’t. The funniest items on the website were “Quotes of the Moment”, offering jewels from the likes of Steven Wright, Dave Barry and Ralphie from “A Christmas Story.”
I forgot to mention that if you evaluate a professor, you are entered into a contest where you could win five brand-name condoms and a thiry-minute phone card, each of which should last all of one weekend on a college campus. I’m sorry, that was a typo. I meant one day.
Frustrated, I typed “Rate my professor” into the search engine and clicked to see what would happen.
Bingo.
www.RateMyProfessors.com was what I was looking for. While not as flashy as the first site, “Rate” got down to business, and I found fifty-five (as opposed to five) Fairfield professors, rated as either “good quality”, “average quality”, “poor quality” and/or “sexy” (???). No one should be thinking about his or her professor as sexy. Just stop it.
I myself couldn’t resist tinkering with a few evaluations. For the most part, Fairfield faculty members were rated average to good, though there were enough poorly rated professors to make the site interesting. Pithy comments accompany a few of the evaluations, and seeing as registration is in the air, perhaps this is a site worth looking into.
Another great feature on this site is a link to www.ratemyteachers.com, in case you want to give belated accolades or vent deep-rooted anger to that English teacher from your high school.
So, when the bubble sheets at the end of the semester just aren’t enough, unload your gripes and get your cyber revenge, and remember: the unsuspecting professor will have no clue it’s you. Play nice.
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