2.21.2007

responsibility to the truth.

Teacher evaluation day. In a good or even mediocre class, it's a good waste of twenty minutes of class time. The teacher has to leave, so you can quickly fill in your bubbles with your #2 pencil and be on your way home a little earlier than usual.

For crummy classes, it's no less than a moral quandary. You could've spent all semester hating this class, loathing this teacher, lamenting every precious second of your life wasted in this room, but when comes time to fill in the bubbles under the words "Very Poor," you kind of lose your momentum. The truth is, I've never had a peofessor who was an all-out bad person, just a terrible instructor. And so do I tell the truth, because I really, really want to, or do I spare the poor sot's felings and doom future students to the same torment? Suddenly the person's better points are glaring at me and I'm weighing being a friendly person against whether I actually learned anything.

The bubbles aren't so bad. You can fill those in, trying to even out your "Very Poor" marks with your "Excellent" ones. You can say that she wasn't so great about understanding the material, but she sure did start class on time! But then you come to the questions on the back with their wide open spaces waiting to be filled with words - in your own handwriting - and you can't just lie to open-ended questions.

Oh, the dilemma. And maybe I say that I softened the blow, but if you read it, you might not know that. I justify my frankness to myself by saying that they asked, and so I told them. If I felt that the class was no good, I have the right say so when asked outright. I have a responsibility to the TRUTH!

But I still disguise my handwriting.

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