Applying for awards & just made mistake of reading SFFs 🫠

Been at this 20 years since my TA/adjunct days.

Maybe it’s the students, or maybe I’m getting worse at teaching. But my scores and qualitative feedback are just declining. And I am just so fucking burnt out by how demoralizing it all is.

Back in the day, I used to be a fan favorite, solidly known as a top teacher. And when my feedback started to take a turn, I’d implement changes in response to it the following semester. But each time, as soon as I’d update the class, students would complain they wanted the class to be more like the class I’d just revised. It was constant flipping back and forth like this. So eventually I just stopped reading the feedback altogether.

So now here I am, needing to apply for an award that requires solid teaching. But I open up my SFFs and the customers are just clearly not having it. And here I am, obviously in a slump because these student comments just crush me these days.

Farewell, award. I’ve got no confidence or motivation anymore.

How are you all coping?