Nuts & Boalts: What Y*o Say?

Wednesday, December 01, 2010

What Y*o Say?

"Anonymous said...: Sorry to hijack the thread, but will someone start a professor quotes thread?"
Yes, yes I will.

Post your most memorable professor quotes from the semester in the comments! Remember not to use full professor names in your responses.

47 Comments:

Anonymous said...: "I've been ICED? What does that mean?" Professor then proceeded to drink the Smirnoff Ice.; 12/01/2010 7:41 PM
Unknown said...: ‎"Pennsylvania is a bad actor. It's not as high up on the list of parasite states as, say, Delaware, but as a state it is a bad actor. ... it is a troll." - Rako*ski; 12/01/2010 8:27 PM
Anonymous said...: "It will be difficult and dispiriting...I'd like to say it hurts me more than it hurts you, but it really doesn't." -Skl*nksy discussing his final; 12/01/2010 10:23 PM
Anonymous said...: “If you are driving drunk, make sure you’ve got all of your taillights working”
– Fl*tcher; 12/02/2010 8:10 AM
Anonymous said...: "Latin legal phrases like res gestae are like Italian operas. They're much better when you don't know what's being said in English." - Skl*nsky; 12/02/2010 9:45 AM
Anonymous said...: "They be like smoove
Can u teach me how to dougie?
You know why?
Cause all da b*tches love me
All I need is a beat that's super bumpin
And for you, you, and you to back it up and dump it!"

- Prof. L*vy; 12/02/2010 1:15 PM
Anonymous said...: "And so now you've got this big 800 lb. guerilla in the corner sucking his thumb..." - DeLe@ discussing minority valuation discounts. Wait...what? Exactly.; 12/02/2010 4:01 PM
Anonymous said...: "Is this an argument against marrying a securities lawyer." G**nis; 12/02/2010 7:26 PM
Anonymous said...: Prof. Schw***z, Torts:

1) (Discussing a case with an insane defendant): So what does this case teach us? You may wake up one day and think that Batman is good and trying to save the world, and that your life partner has the devil on speed dial. And from this we should draw two things: number one, it doesn't mean you're not still in love. But number two, it does mean you shouldn't drive.

2) Schwartz's Law for the Adoption of Technology: example: answering machines. Phase 1) No one has them and you're annoyed when one picks up, "I'm not going to leave a message with a machine!" Phase 2) Lots of people have them and you're annoyed when someone doesn't have one. Phase 3) The only person who doesn't have one is the Unabomber.

3) All-time greatest country drinking songs: Number 2, "She's acting single, I'm drinking doubles. It's on YouTube, but don't look now."

4) Prof.: Since you're all turning in your papers today, I won't do the normal calling on you thing. Instead, what I'll do is ask for volunteers, and if not I'll just talk to myself. Students: Yay!!!!

5) This note came from a student of mine who worked at Disney World, the second happiest place on earth. The first happiest place on earth, of course, is Berkeley Law School.

6) (Discussing strict liability for wild animals): I don't know about you guys, but I don't really worry if there's a zebra on the loose. They're kind of like little donkeys in a Halloween costume.

7) Why law school is like arctic exploration: It seemed like a good idea when you started the trip.; 12/02/2010 8:47 PM
Dan said...: Man, I miss Sc*wartz. I could listen to that stuff all day. He needs to put out a greatest hits record.; 12/03/2010 1:49 AM
Anonymous said...: Schw*rtzy's jokes are EXACTLY the same every year, but that doesn't detract from them, really.; 12/03/2010 1:55 AM
Anonymous said...: Actually, 1:55, having attended Schw***z's Torts class each of the last 3 years, I can attest to the fact that he actually puts a good number of new ones into the mix every year. Only last year's class got the classic illustration of someone taking Justin Timberlake's fancy hat to illustrate conversion, for instance. But the old chestnuts do stick around.; 12/03/2010 8:46 AM
Anonymous said...: 8:46,

Nobody should trust you, because you are obviously not paying enough attention in the class to have to repeat it twice. Idiot.; 12/03/2010 11:05 AM
Patrick Bageant said...: Hey, genius (that’s you, 11:05
!).

8:46 is an ASP tutor.; 12/03/2010 11:10 AM
Armen Adzhemyan said...: Instead we should trust you for eliminating the possibility of an ASP tutor sitting in during the lectures for two years. Clever!; 12/03/2010 11:10 AM
Anonymous said...: 11:05 here.

I was kidding.

Love,

11:05.; 12/03/2010 11:35 AM
Anonymous said...: 8:46 here,

Don't worry, 11:05. I got it. And you know, there may still be something in what you said.

ASP tutor; 12/03/2010 12:00 PM
Anonymous said...: She got a legal and shat all over everyone. - me, professor of life; 12/03/2010 3:56 PM
Anonymous said...: I think Schw*rtz's repeated jokes are some of the best. I especially like when he pauses for laughs and then moves on. It might be unintentional, but it demonstrates surprisingly excellent comic timing. Like Betty White-level genius.; 12/03/2010 10:24 PM
Anonymous said...: What's up with the course evaluation return rate? I've been getting a ridiculous amount of email that to fill out evaluations because the completion rate is too low(I already have). I don't remember ever being peskered like this before, so is the completion rate lower than usual, or are they just adopting a strategy of peskering?; 12/04/2010 12:42 AM
Anonymous said...: Personally, I didn't fill some out because I was pissed off that none of the student comments got posted last semester. 50% response rate on the LAST QUESTION of the survey ain't happening. Supposedly the faculty expressed concerns on how people would evaluate teachers of color, which may just be the most absurd and stupid reasoning I've ever heard.; 12/04/2010 12:51 AM
Anonymous said...: "Supposedly the faculty expressed concerns on how people would evaluate teachers of color . . . "

WHAT?!

Substantiate!; 12/04/2010 2:00 PM
Anonymous said...: At the BHSA town hall, when asked why there was a such a high threshold to getting student to student questions posted, they responded that teachers of color were concerned about bias against them. It makes as little sense to you as it does to me.; 12/04/2010 2:52 PM
Anonymous said...: G*anis
"Now, here's how you avoid integration."

"Aren't you afraid of integration?"

[note - integration refers to combining seemingly isolated securities offerings]; 12/04/2010 10:48 PM
Anonymous said...: I think the issue regarding faculty concerns over evaluations stemmed from empirical evidence indicating that when a free response evaluation is offered, there was a marked difference in the nature and tone of the comments directed towards faculty of color. The concerns were voiced by a number of professors, not just professors of color. And no one was patently opposed to the student-to-student question(or to posting the responses), they just wanted to be sure that there were clear parameters about the expectation of civility and respect.; 12/06/2010 9:15 PM
Anonymous said...: 9:15, Thanks for your input, especially because it sounds like you are faculty/admin/student in the know. However, if S2S comments weren't released simply in order to protect teachers - white, brown or blue - who were negatively and harshly critiqued, the faculty can't expect student enthusiasm when it comes time for next semester's evals. I would be interested to know if the 'nature and tone' of the comments you mentioned actually breached race, or if professors of color simply received more negative/harsh critiques? Though it is embarrassing to think that even a single student would mention race in a course evaluation (English proficiency is a different matter entirely), I imagine that the few bigoted responses or personal attacks could be removed from the pool of S2S comments by establishing relatively objective and easily applied standards. Either have S2S comments or don't, but please don't ask for student feedback and give us a lame excuse for why they weren't released simply because you didn't like the results. If the same teachers are consistently getting beat up in the evaluations, it may be with good reason, and if the S2S evaluations were too harsh - set standards, let them be known, and enforce them.; 12/06/2010 10:22 PM
Anonymous said...: To add to what everyone is saying: let's concede the concerns are legit. Let someone be in charge of reviews, hell give them unlimited discretion. Anything that is a comment unrelated to the teachers ability (personal attacks) should be deleted. This should not be hard to edit.
It is insulting to me that the faculty is worried that student body that is diverse and accepting as any can't handle comments. I for one will not fill out reviews until this is fixed.

For the one S2S I could see, the comments were all very helpful and well written, I didn't see one thing that shouldn't have been there.; 12/06/2010 10:48 PM
Anonymous said...: 10:22, the discussions of negative comments pertained to several empirical studies that documented the disparate effect of free response evaluations on minorities and women. The concerns did not reference any particular member of the Boalt faculty -- they were just general concerns supported by empirical eveidence.

As discussed when the S2S question went live last year, the associate dean has the discretion to redact comments that are inappropriate or disrespectful. As has always been the case, professors have the option to withhold their evaluation scores from public display, but as far as I can tell, many professors have opted to have their evals (including the S2S responses) made available to students.; 12/06/2010 10:49 PM
Anonymous said...: Someone took the time to conduct an empirical study of Berkeley Law free response questions?; 12/06/2010 11:25 PM
Anonymous said...: I'm guessing that yeah, it's probably true at a place like *Fill in college from the South*, but here, I doubt it.; 12/06/2010 11:42 PM
Anonymous said...: Seriously, there have been studies on the disparate effect of free form evaluation on university professors of color? Disparate effect on what exactly? Their feelings? These are people at the top of their field. Bizzare to say the least.

Anyway, back to the original discussion, what do these disparate effects of free form evaluation have anything to do with the impossibly high 50% threshold for S2S evals? It seems that administration wants it both ways: encouraging people to write thoughtful comments on their class experiences, but insisting that as many of you should do S2S as possible if you want to see the results, even if you don't have anything constructive to say.

The whole thing seems to be a mess. And I guess that after 2.5 years I'm just a tad bitter that with more available S2S evals, I may have avoided one or two of the 5 profs, with medium-high numerical rankings, who have absolutely no business teaching in an institution of this caliber/cost.

- 10:22; 12/07/2010 1:15 AM
Anonymous said...: ummm... the original discussion was actually professor quotes.; 12/07/2010 7:49 AM
Anonymous said...: profs have a vested interest in avoiding public evals. as the system currently stands, profs have the ability to prevent or inhibit S2S evals. the only thing that would incent profs to be more generous would be the specter of student-run evals.; 12/07/2010 9:38 AM
Anonymous said...: Is there any reason we can't just make our own site? If we advertise it on this blog it should draw good numbers.; 12/07/2010 10:03 AM
Armen Adzhemyan said...: I don't have the time to run them down, but I know that in my time as a student, I was pretty dissatisfied with the existing review process, in large because professors never released substantive comments, and really, if they have control over releasing the comments, a student cannot give it the due weight that it deserves. And so all you had were meaningless numerical ratings that were cropped so tightly around 3.9 to 4.1 as to be completely useless as any metric.

I often complained bitterly that UCLA students were able to host a private website offering professor ratings, and they limited the rating/comments access to current students with verified enrollment in the class. It caused some heartburn among professors who care more about what some Harvard fellow might say at a conference rather than what his students think, but overall it worked. The comments tell you about the professor, and often if they are negative, they tell you about the student, e.g., "I hate this professor, he refused to raise my grade!"

I'm not saying this is what Boalt needs. There are other considerations, high among them the fact that unlike a school with 35,000 students, Boalt is relatively small and feelings can be hurt much more easily. Also, anecdotal evidence about the quality of teaching is easy to obtain.; 12/07/2010 10:10 AM
Armen Adzhemyan said...: Let's revise that first paragraph:

I don't have the time to run them down, but I know that in my time as a student I often posted on this blog about my dissatisfaction with the existing review process, in large part because professors never released substantive comments. And really, if they have control over releasing the comments, a student cannot give it the due weight that it deserves. So all you had to go on were meaningless numerical ratings that were cropped so tightly around 3.9 to 4.1 as to be completely useless as any metric. I'm not sure if this is still the system in place, but if it is, I can understand the frustration.; 12/07/2010 10:12 AM
Anonymous said...: http://boaltprofs.blogspot.com/

now shut down, but easy to do.; 12/07/2010 1:57 PM
Matt Berg said...: Totally willing to turn BoaltProfs over, if someone wants to run it.; 12/07/2010 2:11 PM
Anonymous said...: Hope someone with some computer expertise steps up, this site could be a huge help to Boalties.; 12/07/2010 2:35 PM
Anonymous said...: prediction: as soon as that site is up and running again, the administration/faculty will step up and offer a distractor alternative.; 12/07/2010 7:47 PM
Anonymous said...: But this time we will know it's not a genuine offer.; 12/07/2010 8:12 PM
Anonymous said...: http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2010/11/offensive-student-evaluations.html

No matter how highly you think of your fellow classmates, a lot of students are just jerks when they are given anonymity. Just look at comments on this website.; 12/08/2010 12:07 PM
Anonymous said...: suppose there was a student-run site with s2s comments and some student made dumb comments like those? presumably the vast majority of students wouldn't pay any attention and if there were any bigoted students they'd remain bigoted. so that's no reason to cut off access to immensely helpful s2s comments.; 12/08/2010 2:16 PM
Anonymous said...: Who cares if a few students insult the professor. We are paying them a lot of money for a valuable service. They should suck it up. Thousands of small businesses on sites like Yelp deal with public reviews. And most of them make way less money (and many probably do way more work than law professors).

I have zero doubt that faculty "concerns" about professors being insulted are cover for their real fear: competition.; 12/11/2010 11:46 AM
Anonymous said...: Why is everyone at our school so whiny?; 12/11/2010 12:43 PM
Anonymous said...: Because we expected to sleepwalk into 160k jobs and for some reason haven't been able to. And maybe because that's the nature of law students.
Also, I think people speak up more when they're unhappy about something than when they're happy - so you get disproportionate raising of voices.; 12/11/2010 12:50 PM
Camille P said...: I am super late to this, but happy to talk with folks who are concerned with the S2S comment thing since it was spearheaded by BHSA last year, particularly Matt, myself, and the amazing Curriculum Committee student reps.

Most of our faculty were amazingly supportive of a S2S feature, and this overwhelmingly included faculty of color. Their (faculty at large) primary concern was ensuring on-point and civil feedback. After initial discussion, the proposal passed overwhelmingly (maybe even unanimously).

Working with a wide array of experts in implicit bias, psychology, performance evaluation design, etc., your student reps came up with a thoughtfully worded S2S question to help ameliorate equity and implicit bias concerns. The empirical research on these features is pretty established in both law and behavioral psychology, so I'm a little surprised by the skepticism (but whatever).

The threshold requirement--50%--exists largely to protect student anonymity and to ensure sufficient sampling. If fewer than half of students comment in a seminar, it's probably easy to identify who they are. Similarly, because evaluations tend to bring out perspectives at the extremes (extremely in love with and extremely in hate with a class), getting to 50% is important for ensuring that the S2S comments actually mean something.

Like I said, I'm happy to discuss further by email or in person. N&B anonymous commentary is not an ideal forum for discussion :)

- Camille; 12/27/2010 9:34 AM

Nuts & Boalts

Wednesday, December 01, 2010

What Y*o Say?

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