Rate Your Brother

My brother made me a "best sister" pin. It's adorable. He is the best brother ever.

But let's talk about RateMyProfessors.com. The concept is horrifying. Really. The idea of "rating" people just sounds like the perfect chance for people to be absolutely stupid and rude, and their poor, hard-working professors (most of which are actually human, I assure you) are the victims. It is the perfect chance for people to trash-talk their professors and show a whole lot of disrespect.

So when I found how useful the feedback from students was, I was amazed. It turns out that, while there are some of the expected "TH1S TEECHR SUXXXX!!!" sorts of posts (none that horrifying for any of the professors at my school, thankfully), the majority of the "ratings" are from civilised people who have made the connection between the intangibility of the internet and physical reality. The feedback students gave is actually useful: many students seem to be aware that no class is for everyone, and there is a lot of information from students as to how the professor runs the class and what kind of people would do well (or not) in it.

What was, to me, most interesting though, was seeing how a professor has changed. One professor in particular had a lot of negative feedback a few years ago, many students mentioning how moody and hard to communicate with s/he had been. Slowly, as I went backwards through the ratings (the oldest are on the last page), they got better. Students started to leave much more positive feedback, and the complaints of moodiness became less and less frequent until pretty much all the reviews were positive. It was amazing. Proof that people change, right there on some silly professor-rating website.

I like to think that's sort of how my feedback would look, if I had a "rate your Elizabeth" site. Lots of complaints of moodiness and irritability years ago, but progressing in the positive direction. I'm not sure about old feedback (Who knows, maybe I was nicer than I remember? People from my early childhood seem to remember me as nice, despite what I remember myself as), but I think that "best sister" pin says a lot. There may not have been much competition, but I don't think he would have made one for a mediocre sister. He may be sweet, but he's brutally honest.

If someone ever makes a "Rate Your Brother" site, my brother gets a perfect score.