I've noticed that when students get upset with grades they don't blame themselves, they blame the teachers. This isn't always the case, but it happens often enough to be annoying.
I had a student who failed a class when I first started teaching. He later told me it was the best thing that ever happened to him because it forced him to become a better artist. I wish more students were like him. This is the kind of student who keeps in touch with me even after the class, or after graduation for feedback and advice.
One of my former students asked for feedback on her marketing materials. I'm always glad to do this when the student is ready to hear criticism.
But unfortunately some students don't take it so well. Some students threaten to get me fired. Some threaten me with lawsuits. Others look like they want to jump me in class. One student in particular, I thought was gonna pound me since he failed the class. The other students picked up on it and were ready to defend me. Some of these students who were ready to defend me, some of them were taking the class the second time around because they had failed it before. It's good to see that when it happens.
On the whole, the IDEA forms, those studid little evaluation forms that you fill out to evaluate us as teachers are pretty useless, in that they don't tell us anything we don't already know. For example, I have a tendency to be blunt during a critique. I don't need a class full of students filling out a scantron to tell me this.
Some students lash out on myspace or ratemyprofessor.com. The unfortunate thing is that professors can't write a rebuttal without paying to sign up on that site. For me I'm not interested enough in changing someone's opinion of me. I've got a lot of reviews calling me the worst teacher ever. I'm not sure how many of you feel that way, but I would guess it's a fairly high number as my classes are almost never filled and Kevin and Randolf's classes are always packed.
But if you have a free minute, go to ratemyprofessor.com and answer a few questions about me, Kevin, Randolf, Ruel, David, etc. It's completely anonymous so you can say whatever you like.
I saw a great video on YouTube of three designers who took 4 days to recreate a similar D-Day scene from Saving Private Ryan.
All of you have access to comparable equipment and software that they used. I'd love to see a student turn in something like this. There is tons of desert here in Vegas. You could always rent or buy a costume or two. Don't be limited by money. Be limited by your imagination.
I would much rather sit through a student portfolio review of something like this rather than seeing far too much bad compositing work. I'd like to see someone with a portfolio that aspires to making movie quality work rather than aspire to be an intern at a TV station doing weather graphics.
It's always nice to get a good review. I haven't participated in a show for quite some time.
What sucks is that my name got spelled wrong. With a name like mine, it constantly gets thrashed, especially by outsourced Indians whenever I have to call when I need tech support. I used to hate making collect calls because I hate spelling my full name for people.
Oh well. I was out of town when the show was held so I couldn't respond to the email for approval of the image tags.
Still it's nice to have a stranger compliment you on the strength of your work. It's good to know that your work speaks for itself, without you having to stand next to it and explain it to someone. This is a lesson I wish more students would understand. In general, the better the work, the less you have to verbally justify your decisions.
The review of us as teachers was slightly less glowing, I suspect from comparison to what hangs in the halls that is clearly student work. By all rights, there shouldn't be as much of a gulf in quality between student work and professional pieces from instructors. In actually, the school is maturing so eventually we should be seeing student work that can hang side by side with teacher work, if not surpass it.
In fact, I forgot who the artist was who initially said it, but if you don't become better than your teacher, you have failed him. That's how I tried to go through school, and admittedly, it's not easy if happen to have a bad ass teacher, but it's also one of the fastest ways to becoming good. Once you have a clear goal of what you need to do you can achieve it.
I'd like to see someone turn in a project for Kevin's sculpture class like this. This dude took cookie boxes and lids of off Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets to make a Transformer.
It's always nice to get a good review. I haven't participated in a show for quite some time. 
