Out of the Dark: Rate my perceptions
Students shouldn’t rely on others’ professor reviews when it comes to their own class scheduleHi, my name is Anna, and I used to be a user-reviews junkie. It started as a harmless gander the summer before my freshman year, after I found out about this new-fangled rating site of college professors, called ratemyprofessors.com. I was fascinated by the fact that you could make two-second judgments about a potential professor based on what others had to say about a class or the professor who taught it.
In the scurry to sign up for classes my first semester, I didn’t think about my venture to the site that beholds everything I wanted to know about JMU’s pool of professors.
When my second semester rolled around and I could take longer than three seconds to choose which courses I wanted to take, I put ratemyprofessors.com to good use, and didn’t click the “Finish Enrolling” button unless I was certain I would like the professor. I continued to do this for the next two semesters, forgoing enrolling in classes that were described with words like “pop quizzes,” “attendance policy” (unless it had a “no” in front of it) or “get out if you can.” or if students rated professors with words like “worst,” “hard to understand” or “the devil.”
Last semester, I decided to try an experiment and check to see if other students’ reviews were realistic, compared to my own experiences. Some of the comments rang true, but I came to find that most of my professors were painted in the wrong light. Or at least that was my impression.
It’s been eighty days since my last peek at professor reviews, but I am proud to say that I don’t take the reviews I read as seriously as I once did.
Now that I look back on my high expectations, I realize I probably missed out on some challenging courses, or professors that I could have clicked with. This isn’t to say that there aren’t a few bad cookies in a batch. However, I should have come to my own conclusions by experiencing a class for myself rather than relying on others’ ratings.
In college, I feel like a professor should play less of a role as a teacher, who shovels busy work in students’ faces, and more of a role as a facilitator, who guides students’ adventures of taking education into their own hands. So a professor’s personality or even his or her teaching ability should come second to the way to course is taught and how students absorb the course’s information. Some attach a professor’s personality with the content of the course, but we all need to realize some professors may seem hard merely because of the subject matter, or because they want to push their students to do the best they can.
A professor of mine closed her class on Tuesday with some reviews she’s received over the years. As I expected, some wrote her class off as an easy-A, some wrote that her class was disorganized and some wrote that she was extremely nice. After displaying a Power Point page full of comments, my professor confessed that she had in fact submitted a few of the comments about herself, boosting her own ratings, and showcasing her strengths to show how easily people can skew others’ perceptions. Who knows how many other professors have done this, since every post on ratemyprofessors.com is anonymous.
Even though some chemistry between professor and student would be nice, it’s not a necessity in order to gain something from the class or even pass a major-required course. And even if one student reports bad chemistry with a professor, that doesn’t mean you’ll have the same interpretation. After all, opinion is all relative.
You might not want to walk into GHUM 200 with no idea of the professor’s teaching style, but don’t come to class the first day with preconceptions of how the entire course will be conducted.
They are arbitrary judgments, which may not hold true for the next student who passes through that professor’s classroom doors. Not only are the comments arbitrary, but they usually reflect polar opinions of people who either loved or hated the professor or class.
When it comes down to it, ratemyprofessors.com is just a fun way to see what others have to say about your potential professors. It’s sometimes humorous to see just how spiteful students can be to past professors. The reviewers may want to rant or relieve a grudge they have against a certain professor, or they may want to put a particular professor on a pedestal because of the way that students was treated.
Take everything you gather from the site with a grain of salt. If you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, you shouldn’t judge a professor by a smiley (or frowny) face.
Anna Young is a sophomore SMAD and sociology major.
