Is this how evals work at your school?

[argonana]

All right. First off, if this comes off as a tool-ish thread, I apologize. I'm genuinely curious about this issue but am too embarrassed to ask my classmates.

We just got back our evaluations/grades from our first semester course (which ended 4 months ago...yeah, they're a bit slow here). Our evals include comments from our PBL facilitators, our oral examiners (for our final), and the course director. I was surprised to find that all of these guys evaluated my level of intelligence as well as my skills. Is this a common practice? I'm not sure what the point would be of doing so, as everyone in med school is intelligent, and quite frankly, it seems to be a bit un-PC and not entirely relevant. In all my years of getting report cards in middle school and high school, I don't remember any of my teachers making such overt statements about this issue. I'm not sure exactly why, but it kind of disturbs me...perhaps because I highly doubt they're actually qualified to make such statements after spending, say, 20 minutes speaking with us (in the case of my oral examiner) or never having spoken to us at all (in the case of our course director).

Unless big brother is watching me on these guys' behalf, I don't think I can take such statements seriously.

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[deleted113029]

unfortunately this is just how life is at times. people evaluating you on minimal info or just by word of mouth. this just emphasizes the importance of first impressions.

i had 60% of my clinical grade in one rotation determined by three attendings who spent a total of 3 hours (1 hr/attending) out of 8 weeks with me. the other 40% was determined by an attending who spent over 7 weeks with me.

just bend over and move on...before you know it you will have graduated and forgotten about it.

 

[argonana]

yeah, that's what i've noticed. medical school is so absurdly subjective. in this case, the words were actually extremely positive, but i just don't feel like those guys had any basis for making any statements about me at all (besides my numbers, and perhaps my presentation skills in PBL).

i suppose i should just let it go, but it just doesn't seem right.

 

[Critical Mass]

Just be glad that the admin doesn't direct to you to a publicly-accessible third party survey website where you can evaluate your fellow students without any verification of who you are. Now that's "professional" for ya.

I think that the only requirement to be dean at my school is previous status as a boy scout leader.

And oh yeah, big brother is always watching.

 

[SeventhSon]

well, we ALL evaluate everyone, in every way, in more manners than can possibly be listed anyway. The willingness to put it on paper is just a little less bashful.

 

[Mayhem]

You still think there's some logic to this process, that's the problem. I had a Paeds consultant tell my entire group that we've never been on the ward and we don't do any work and we will all be getting crappy evals. He almost did it too, except the residents and the clerkship director explained that we were always on the ward and the only reason he never saw us is because we had lectures in the only 2 hours he chooses to come to the hospital each week. Never mind that he had gotten our schedule months before.

 

[QuinnB]

All right. First off, if this comes off as a tool-ish thread, I apologize. I'm genuinely curious about this issue but am too embarrassed to ask my classmates.

We just got back our evaluations/grades from our first semester course (which ended 4 months ago...yeah, they're a bit slow here). Our evals include comments from our PBL facilitators, our oral examiners (for our final), and the course director. I was surprised to find that all of these guys evaluated my level of intelligence as well as my skills. Is this a common practice? I'm not sure what the point would be of doing so, as everyone in med school is intelligent, and quite frankly, it seems to be a bit un-PC and not entirely relevant. In all my years of getting report cards in middle school and high school, I don't remember any of my teachers making such overt statements about this issue. I'm not sure exactly why, but it kind of disturbs me...perhaps because I highly doubt they're actually qualified to make such statements after spending, say, 20 minutes speaking with us (in the case of my oral examiner) or never having spoken to us at all (in the case of our course director).

Unless big brother is watching me on these guys' behalf, I don't think I can take such statements seriously.

People work hard...but I don't know about that.
Anyway, I honestly believe that with these "student x is intelligent" comments they are more grading whether you come across as intellegent, but the actual content is another story and you're right, they couldn't possibly have a good enough idea in a half hour.

 

[ut2010]

I think our ability to communicate well is crucial in interactions with patients and in a healthcare team (we are the managers of the healthcare team).

Therefore, I imagine they are assessing your ability to communicate in a concise, logical, and effective manner in a short time frame. It is an important skill to develop and unfortunately, I have alot of work to do in that area