Evaluations

Disclaimer: There is one swear word in this entry. I am retelling a story—a story that would not be funny without it, so try not to judge me.

I work at a University. I also talk to professors (surprise, surprise).

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hearing the following story.

Professor A (PA) was new to the faculty. It was time for class evaluations. Each professor was assigned to proctor another professor’s evaluations and PA was assigned to proctor Professor B’s (PB) evaluations.

PA went into the department office to collect the evaluations sheets before heading up to do the evaluations. PB happened to be in the office at the same time.

PB: “Are you proctoring my evaluations?”
PA: “Yep.”
PB: “Let me tell you how I would like them administered.”
PA: “Great.” (PA was assuming at this time that every professor liked to have evaluations administered a certain way.)
PB: “After you pass out the evaluations, it usually helps if you go to the board and write the following words: marvelous, outstanding, and fantastic. Those words come up a lot on my evaluations and it gets annoying when you have 20-30 people ask how to spell them.”

It was then PA realized that he had been the butt of a joke. They laughed together and PA proceeded to the classroom to proctor the evaluations.

Later that same day PA and PB happened to be in the department office again.
PB: “So how did the evaluations go?”
PA: “Fine, the students just had one question.”
PB: “Really? What was it?”
PA: “They just wanted to know whether or not to add a hyphen to asshole.”

PA and PB have been great friends ever since.