For everyone who has completed their course evaluations out of spite, to make the pop-ups go away, this one’s for you.

Let’s paint the picture. It’s 5 pm on Friday night. Your econometrics final is due at 11. At this point, your grades in the class so far have been a solid B on the midterm and an A in-class participation. In order to check the weighted breakdown of assignments, and see the worth of your final, you must navigate to the “grades” page on coursework. While this sounds like the setup for a fucked up ACT math problem, it is in fact the sad reality for many during this time of year. In fact, finals seem to be the timeframe in which coursework gets the most digital traffic. It seems only right in this case for Columbia to use this time period to hold everyone hostage with course evaluation popups.

First off, I would like to preface what is about to follow by stating that I personally have no problem with course evaluations (to be referred as “evals” from this point forward). In fact, I am a firm believer in filling out my evals in order to present accurate feedback for future students and the university. What I do have a problem with is that every single time I navigate to a new coursework page I receive another reminder to fill them out.

Let me give another scenario. Your final is released. You navigate to the “assignments” tab to take your exam. However, you cannot open the file because the entire screen is covered with a reminder to fill out course reviews. This is not a scenario; in fact, this has happened to me twice!!!!! so far!!!! during finals!!!! Course evals it seems stand as the password-protected gateway, halting all those who wish to take their finals in peace – or view their grades without stress. Also, it’s not like I will never get around to filling out the evaluation. They just happen to pop up at the worst times when I always seem preoccupied with something pressing.

What’s the absolute worst you ask? The godforsaken “do it later” button, innocently placed at the bottom of the eval. At least half the time, the button doesn’t decide to press. Maybe it’s early, and he’s just late to work or sometime in the afternoon, and he has to pick up his kids at school. Regardless, the button doesn’t work. Then, when it does, any simpler interaction you carry out on screen causes the popup, too, popup. This continues to happen every single day, for days on end. Eventually, like I’m sure you all have done, I gave in and wrote my evaluations; however, they were not written out of intent to give feedback; instead, they were written out of spite because I just wanted to open for once courseworks in peace for once.

CUIT via CUIT