Just over a year ago when Tearfree’s daughter and a friend were discovering the wonders of Google and the Internet, they decided to look up their mothers on ratemyprofessors.com, a site they’d heard the adults heatedly discussing on more than one occasion.
Tearfree’s then 10-year-old daughter was, to say the least, distressed to discover some of the not-so-nice things written about her Mom there, and, like the loyal daughter she is, she took it upon herself to set the ratemyprofessors.com record straight. “I would love to have this prof as my BFF,” she gushed online as if she were at a slumber party. Tearfree’s daughter’s friend also added some equally kind words about her own mother.
The girls were so proud of the instant results of their handiwork that the next time they got together, they decided to boost their Moms’ ratings yet again. But this time their flattering postings were removed from the site. The girls had been unmasked as users making multiple posts about the same professor from the same IP address. They’d encountered just about the only barrier ratemyprofessors.com has.
While most profs –including, until very recently, Tearfree -- choose to take the high road about ratemyprofessors.com and ignore it, despite the fact that it has given a Google-empowered podium to some of the biggest blowhards currently enrolled in institutes of higher education, Tearfree decided earlier this year that enough was enough.
She did not take the route of more diplomatic colleagues who have appealed successfully to the managers of ratemyprofessors.com to take the worst stuff down. Nor did she follow the example of valiant professors from the social sciences who have performed complex statistical analyses of ratemyprofessors.com’s data and drawn all sorts of conclusions, including the highly obvious one that students are inclined to give top ratings to attractive easy markers. No, instead Tearfree decided she was going to go up against ratemyprofessors.com using their own dubious tactics. Thus, since the beginning of 2006, whenever she finds herself with a free moment while sitting in front of someone else’s computer – be it at the library or at her aunt’s place of employment or at the gym – Tearfree just writes herself a glowing ratemyprofessors.com review and posts it.
The only unsuccessful part of this strategy is that for some reason all the chili peppers she’s given herself, to indicate a scalding hotness rating, have failed to show up. Yet despite that small flaw, Tearfree now has one of the best ratemyprofessors.com ratings in the entire university, making herself an off-the-charts statistical anomaly and a possible footnote in that study that concluded hot easy markers almost always come out on top.
Update: See how the Pentagon is monitoring Tearfree's ratemyprofessors.com strategy
and check out Tearfree goes to Harvard.
11 comments:
Don't these kids (not yours - the other kids) have anything better to do like, for example, study?
Is this the same method that helped Jack win?
I am going there now to give you some chili peppers. Professor Tearfree, right?
I must confess, however, to having gone on ratemyprofessors and mentioned how one particularly notorious professor where I attended school was a relentless sexual harasser. Because it was true. A girl got a great mark from him if she didn't mind him rubbing his balls as he leaned back in his chair and told her how pretty she was. If a girl complained and spoke up, the marks weren't so great. I felt the world needed to know -- as did many of my classmates.
There are urban myths about people who still go on ratemyprofs every week to take revenge on professors they had decades ago before ratemyprofs even existed!
I had a teacher in high school who came from an "old" family and was vitually untouchable She was also sadistic and belonged in a room with soft walls. I could have used something like this (although I did succeed in getting her "retired" after my year with her).
Even back then I was mouthy but I directed it at the principal.
Back when I was in school we had a gym teacher who tied you up with skipping ropes. And a grade two teacher who banged heads together if she found two identical spelling tests or compositions. How times have changed!
I feel your pain, Tearfree. I'm a crew chief and I wouldn't like to see what some of the guys on my crew would write about me. It doesn't matter how you do your job, there are just some people who will never be happy.
My wife gets terrible performance reviews, but she deserves them.
I rated my horny professor years after I graduated. Because I had heard from girls leaving the same school that he was still doing the same thing. The funny thing is, this man is a household name in Canada, with a sweet-as-pie image. Oh how I long to say who it is, but wouldn't want Tearfree to get sued.
When a spiteful student left a totally ridiculous "review" of me on berateyourprofessors.com, I complained to their admin but got no response.
So, I took the same approach as Tearfree. I made up positive reviews for myself.
I would just like to give you the perspective of a student on this issue. I am a fourth year undergrad with a 4.0 GPA and I entirely schedule based on ratemyprof. Why? Because at first I ignored it, and guess what? I ended up with some of the most despicable and/or dreadfully incompetent professors my university has to offer. I had the professor who "didn't believe in A grades" (as if they were unicorns or leprechauns) and the English professor who barely spoke English herself. A friend of mine had a professor who didn't give back any of her assignments until the exam. While I know some students can be vindictive, they are usually really easy to spot and most other students learn to ignore those reviews as well as the reviews of first year students. However, I really appreciate having a resource that tells me if a professor is dry or unintelligible or yes, an incredibly hard marker. The professors I've had since I started using ratemyprof have been fantastic, challenging, and inspiring people. So maybe this isn't actually all about you. Maybe it's about trying to get into grad school or trying to actually learn something from a person who is intelligent, not entitled.
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