Just got and read my teaching evaluation comments.

it's funny (but it's not). My ratio of positive to negative comments is perhaps six to one. (out of maybe 12 total comments). Yet, it's that one that makes the big impression on my mood.

I feel like I want to go home now and stare at HGTV for the rest of the afternoon. Not even knit or quilt. Just sit and stare at the tv.

all because ONE person said "I learned nothing useful in this class." I mean, how do I change that? Do I change it? I'm following kind of a standard syllabus for classes of this nature.

I'm not good at discounting other people's opinions. I can't just justify it to myself saying "oh, that was probably the person who sat in the back of the class and talked all through the semester" or "that's the person who always skipped". I don't know that for a fact (Although I think I know who wrote the long, long positive comment because the other students were hassling her over how much time she took to write out the comment).

Did the person think what they were saying would help me in some way? If they said "I didn't find the discussion of x useful, the way it was presented confused me" I could DO something about that. Or were they just saying it because they were angry and wanted to lash out at someone? Or (horror of horrors) did they think they could get me denied tenure?

this is one of the other reasons why I dread putting together the tenure packet - rereading my past comments. It's funny, but the positive ones don't stick with me like the ones that sting me do.

I don't know - maybe all professors get snarky comments from students regardless of how good they are. But it still hurts.