damning by faint praise

The best illustrations of this, one of the most bizarre and sometimes amusing forces of utterance, often come in student evaluations. And even more frequently the comments that damn by oh-so-faintly-praising sum up in almost soundbite form how the class went, and so they are frequently quite revealing about multiple parties involved. Here's the best example from the most recent batch of evals:

"Didn't let an unenthusiastic class change overall trajectory of course"

And this under instructor strengths, people.

Here are a couple of readings, and oh do I welcome more in the comments:

optimistic: The class wasn't interested in obviously interesting material, but she persevered, remained upbeat even. She really sticks to her theoretical and pedagogical guns.

pessimistic: This woman is boring AND stubborn.

Comments

[Mike Donlin]

AND obtuse!

Awesome.

Because it comes under "strengths," though, I think this student is on your side. You're too hard on yourself. At any rate, here would be my evaluation:

"Didn't let an admiring evaluation change the overall trajectory of her perception of the course."

[jenny]

Ah, the eval comments. I always wince just a little when I first look at them. In my first semester of teaching, one student simply wrote: "Is black the only color you own?"

[caraf]

Several years ago I got this one: "Apart from the plagiarism, I learned a lot in this class. Sorry about that, by the way."

Best student evaluation comment EVER.