Dear Karma Cleanser:
For the past three years, I’ve taught undergraduate classes at a public university that’s about an hour away from my home. The commute can be bothersome, but I enjoy interacting with the students. I never much wondered if they viewed my courses as difficult, and didn’t lose any sleep when the “problem children” stopped showing up.
This semester, however, I overheard a cocky freshman tell another boy in the class about my “ratings page” online. I asked a colleague what this meant and she pointed me toward a website that lets students rank their professors and provide comments about classroom experience. I received very low marks overall. They decided that I was “easy,” “sometimes unhelpful” and “often moody.” Horrors!
I realize I should not let this bother me, but it’s made me question why I suffer a two-hour drive four times a week just to be called “unhelpful” by a bunch of underachievers. Is this the universe trying to tell me something?
Doctor Easy
The Karma Cleanser recently broke bread with a Tony-winning Broadway star who’s taking a break from theater. She revealed that she never once read her show’s reviews the time she was on stage. but saved the clippings until the end of her run. The reason: Such feedback would have made her question her instincts. We think you should take her example seriously — and then go out and read every online review of yourself you can find. Why? Because college ain’t Broadway. Even if the student critics are 100 percent wrong in their reviews, it would behoove you to meet their critiques head on and return the balance of power toward the front of the room.
Dear Karma Cleanser:
I did a bad, bad thing. My girlfriend, who is in real estate, bought a new phone. Not just any phone. It’s a super-duper Blackberry-Sidekick thing that does e-mail, surfs the ‘Net and almost washes windows. Of course, she couldn’t program it. I am no technological wizard myself. But I agreed to help her get her address book moved over. Except, it didn’t transfer. And I accidentally deleted her phone numbers in the process. All 200 of them.
Now she is not speaking to me. She says this snafu might cost her thousands of dollars. I say she should not be mad because I was only trying to help. She says that karma is going to bite me in my ass.
No SIM-pathy
It’s true you were only trying to help, and presumably she asked for your participation, which puts you in a better position than if you’d, say, thrown her address book out of a moving vehicle after a heated argument. But the fault is still yours, and you have to make up for it. Volunteer your services in the task of repopulating the phone book, and play her personal secretary for a while if you have to.
This article appears in Jan 18-23, 2006.
