I remember my COMS 101 class like it was yesterday. I had a terrible registration rotation and had to settle for an 8 a.m., but I remember thinking to myself, “I like mornings, and public speaking should be pretty easy anyways, right?” Wrong. Turns out, I had signed up for a professor who took the class very seriously. My anxiety spiked that quarter because of how much work was assigned and how high their expectations were. I blanked out and started crying in the middle of one of my speeches because I was so scared and tense whenever I was in the class. Polyratings told me that my professor scored a whopping 1.8. Ouch.
For those of you unfamiliar, Polyratings is a website where Cal Poly students can anonymously review and “grade” their professors out of a 4.0 scale. There are over 2,000 professors currently listed on the site, according to Mustang News. Everyone can submit reviews and anyone can read them. When I checked later on in the quarter, my particular professor had numerous terrible reviews, ones that involved a lot of cursing, name-calling and so much anger. Suddenly, I had a justification for why I wasn’t doing well. It couldn’t be my fault for doing poorly if other students hated this professor even more than I did, right?
Although I laughed and cheered on with the horrible reviews at the time, retrospect has proven a different narrative. Yes, the professor assigned a lot of work, more than I believed (and honestly, still believe) is necessary for an introductory GE, but that didn’t stop other people in the class from doing well or liking the professor. That also didn’t stop my best friend from taking the same GE the next quarter and acing it, with no negative comments about how the class went.
Most of the reviews, for my professor and others, are written with incredibly strong, usually negative, emotion. Although emotion certainly has its place, the anonymous commenters more often than not allow it to cloud their reason, which ends in insult and biased anger. Instead of getting fair insight into class format and teaching styles, readers get skewed perspectives based on outlier students who hate their classes.
After taking time to reflect on my experience in my COMS class, I realized that, although I didn’t click with the professor, other aspects of my life had affected my performance in the class just as much. I missed opportunities to potentially do better in the class, because I blamed my performance entirely on the professor and didn’t feel the need to push myself to do better. Since then, many of the professors I’ve had have lower Polyratings than what I used to strive for as a lower-classman student, but I’ve liked, if not totally adored, every class since.
Because let’s face it – if you take the time to write an expletive-filled review of the class, you probably really hate it or really love it. Most students aren’t compelled to submit to PolyRatings, but many like to use the website to express their extreme opinions. If you are one of those students, I urge you to stop. If you want a teacher to change their ways, take the time to fill out a course evaluation at the end of the quarter! That way, the professor can see and use the criticism to make positive changes in their teaching method and course.
Different students connect with different people and different teaching styles. Reading the reviews on Polyratings will almost always expose you to only those who had the misfortune of not connecting. You’ll easily miss out on fascinating classes and good professors if you take Polyratings at face value so stop using them as an objective measuring tool.They’re the furthest thing from objective and they do you no good