Parts I and III are forthcoming because this is long enough. Part I is to be, in part, a personal narrative about time spent in university buildings and, in part, a eulogy to hard cider. Part III is to be an analysis of Parts I and II.

II

I’m not literate enough to drink hard cider all week—or too much literacy is required of me as student. The point is that I’m not a boozing author, nor am I a student at UVA, or UW-Madison, or UVM (maybe I chose wrong)—or apparently, UPenn. Am I bitter? […] Is Harpoon Cider bitter? (A little bit.)

Since I do attend Pitt, I have some other diversions for the academic week (Tuesday through Thursday), currently: lots of reading, running, and Mineo’s, but I’m also reading reviews on ratemyprofessor.com for non-Pitt faculty. (That’s correct.)

I started doing this last spring, because it seemed surreal that people like Paul Krugman and Stephen Greenblatt do still turn up in classrooms a few days each week to teach undergraduates—and they’re either awful or phenomenal, just like professors at Pitt or anywhere else. I’ve since developed an interest in the students who write the reviews, as I’ll now explain. In this case example, I’ll use Lawrence Buell (Harvard), widely considered the preeminent expert on American Literature. I know him as the author of The Future of Environmental Criticism (which I found to be mostly worthless, but it’s not really about American Literature) and, his latest, The Dream of the Great American Novel (very good, and in his sub-discipline). On ratemyprofessor.com, he has a 3.4 out of 5 overall—mediocre, as they go—but only the comments matter, usually. Here are some of them:

This is a person who teaches how to teach as he teaches how to think. Peerless. (08/2006)

I don’t know if “teaches how to teach” was what s/he meant to write. If it was, could it mean that teaching and thinking are very similar, or, better, that Buell has a unique method for teaching teaching and teaching thinking with literature? I’d love to know more about that.

Not the nicest. Makes up a lot of words and has many pets in the class. I learned a lot about what it means to be humiliated. (02/2006)

class was a little sophmoric…but whatever, i’ll accept my A and go home. (10/2003)

“Sophomoric,” Harvard.

A really nice man, but not very bright (04/2003)

Soft spoken, but one of the most powerful people in the profession. Possibly the greatest living scholar of American literature. (03/2003)

kind of dumb, but really well-intentioned (06/2003)

It is preposterous to claim that Buell is possibly the greatest living scholar of American Literature. (06/2003)

and my favorite, also the most recent:

Not that helpful; not much of a sense of humor; too soft-spoken; obsessed by hair-splitting distinctions which are not that relevant to the larger issues which he he only addresses in a very recondite manner. (01/2011)

I like this comment for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that it uses the word “recondite.” For one, it’s not very common on ratemyprofessor, even among students at Harvard. Moreover, it’s a word I’ve used in the past to describe Buell’s writing (before reading these reviews).

I’m anticipating comments like, “well yeah, John, what do you expect of long and arcane monographs written by a Professor at Harvard,” with a you’re-an-undergraduate-at-Pitt inflection. Fine, but remember that I and that student independently used the same word to describe Buell based on separate—although maybe similar— evidence, and remember that Buell’s intelligence and personality (or lack thereof) are among the most common topics in his reviews.

I’m not even really interested in how “smart” or “friendly” or “helpful” he is (what does any of that mean?). I’m interested in the students. These reviews are the most candid and publicly available prose from students at universities everywhere. You find in them the same attitudes, lazy prose, and “sophomoric” spelling errors that you’d see reviews of Pitt faculty (or faculty anywhere).

Unlike text messages or tweets, for example, rate-my-professor reviews are both public and permanent. The site is totally anonymous, so there’s nothing personal at stake for anyone who reads or writes reviews. The reviews themselves are quite often political, motivated by feelings toward the extremes—animosity or sentimentality, usually—and marked for their pithy frankness. Bias is implicit, and it’s probably received equally from all extremes. The middling review or the constructive and very detailed one aren’t very helpful to students, anyway. We know that our experiences won’t be exactly like other people’s, especially when those “others” are anonymous and many years removed from us today: Is he/she the same kind of student that I am? Will this class/this instructor be like that this year? It’s impossible to know. As prospective students, we read reviews to know what we can expect at best and at worst—a general spectrum for our expectations.

I’m probably in a very small minority of people who access reviews as archaeological artifacts or as ethnological entertainment. Thus, I’m probably not being duped into a he-thinks-that-I-think-that-he’s-thinking-that-I’m thinking situation, because people like me simply aren’t the perceived audience (maybe we can describe the audience in detail). Reviews are not edited, curated, or contextualized, unlike admissions-office paraphernalia or secrets-of-the-school-type books. They’re unique in at least that respect.

None of this is to say, “look, we’re all just like Harvard students.” (Or, “look, I am just like a Harvard student.”) Nor is it to argue for the rigor of my “methods” or for the reliability of reviews as evidence, even as vaguely as I’m using it. Students are accepted into Harvard for a number of reasons, some of which are pretty good. There are differences of all kinds between them and us, and among them, and among us. But on a site like ratemyprofessor.com, those distinctions seem to collapse, or reconfigure, at least a little bit. How? Why?

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Anticipated Complaints:

“John, we can’t trust rate my professor…” As if.

“John, not just rate my professor, student reviews on the whole are deeply problematic.” Name something (anything) that isn’t problematic.

 “Yeah, but those kids go to Harvard,” with a they’re-way-smarter-than-you-are inflection. 1. George Bush; and 2. then my point is even stronger: those kids don’t think he’s too bright, and he’s their professor.

“This is inappropriate/whatever” No, it isn’t.

Those complaints aside, let’s talk about internet literacies and ratemyprofessor.com!