Ratemycreator.com

By Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky

Among the many pleasures that the Internet has brought to our lives, professors have recently discovered the joys of seeing our teaching, personality, and "hotness" rated by our students on the popular Web site Ratemyprofessors.com. Are you arrogant? Boring? Think you're attractive enough to rate a chili pepper or nice enough to earn a smiley face? Professors log on furtively to check their results, but they do so at their own risk, because the ratings our students give us are nothing if not brutally honest: "BORING! But I learned there are 137 tiles on the ceiling." "Not only is the book a better teacher, but it has a better personality." "Bring a pillow." "She hates you already." And why not? We've got it coming. Kenyon's faculty win wide praise on the site for their warmth, humanity, and teaching excellence, but let's face it, college students are a captive audience, and even the monkeys at the zoo know exactly what to hurl at their keepers.

As an English professor ("caustic," "condescending," "very conceited"), I couldn't help wondering how authors would stand up to the judgments of their most famous characters. After all, who knows them better? Like students, those who spend their days trapped in literary texts no doubt have strong opinions about the easiness, helpfulness, and clarity--not to mention the hotness--of those who put words in their mouths, shape their destinies, and then send them out to make their way in a world for which they're completely unprepared. Luigi Pirandello once imagined Six Characters in Search of an Author, but it's the Internet age now, and it's time to let those characters speak for themselves as they log on to Ratemycreator.com.

God

Department: Theology

No. of Ratings: 4	Average Helpfulness: 2.5	Hotness Total: 5
Average Easiness: 1.7	Average Clarity: 3.2	Overall Quality: 3.1

Date	Work	E	H	C		User Comments
00/07/00	Genesis	1	3	2		Fascinating lectures! Has a fiery excitement. Tough grader.
4/27/03	Exodus	2	1	5		Gets off topic. Hard to please. Great beard.
4/9/03	Leviticus	3	5	5		Really knows his stuff. So hot!!!
6/6/6	Revelations	1	2	1		Discussion was perfunctory. I tended to zone out. Plays favorites.

Sophocles

Department: Classics

No. of Ratings: 1	Average Helpfulness: 1	Hotness Total: 1
Average Easiness: 1	Average Clarity: 5	Overall Quality: 2.5

Date	Work	E	H	C		User Comments
425 BC	Oedipus	1	1	5		Aaaaaaaghh!

William Shakespeare

Department: Drama

No. of Ratings: 6	Average Helpfulness: 2.8	Hotness Total: 3
Average Easiness: 1.7	Average Clarity: 2.3	Overall Quality: 2.4

Date	Work	E	H	C		User Comments
4/3/06	As You Like It	1	2	1		I didn't.
12/2/05	Hamlet	1	3	1		To sleep, perchance to dream.
11/22/05	Henry V	3	4	4		When he speaks The air, a charter'd libertine, is still And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences. (But what's with that beard?)
5/703	The Tempest	2	2	5		Taught me language, and my profit on't is, I know how to curse.
11/9/03	Macbeth	2	3	2		Trick questions. The tests are murder.
9/15/02	Cymbeline	1	3	1		Huh?

Virginia Woolf

Department: Women's Studies

No. of Ratings: 1	Average Helpfulness: 4	Hotness Total: 4
Average Easiness: 2	Average Clarity: 1	Overall Quality: 4.1

Date	Work	E	H	C		User Comments
11/23/05	To the Lighthouse	2	4	1		Good discussions, but we never get anywhere.
4/28/04	A Room of One's Own	3	4	1		Looks just like Nicole Kidman!

James Joyce

Department: Emetics

No. of Ratings: 1	Average Helpfulness: 1	Hotness Total: 5
Average Easiness: 1	Average Clarity: 1	Overall Quality: 4.8

Date	Work	E	H	C		User Comments
6/16/04	Ulysses	1	5	1		yes I said yes I will yes

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