What is the rule of thumb for taking student evaluations to heart? I generally get a few great comments and a few awful comments. I try to take both with a grain of salt... It seems to me, most of the time that the students with the great comments did well in the course and the students that didn't do well felt obliged to blame the instructor... I'm constantly amazed at the ability of humans to convince themselves of ________ (fill in the blank). How can an instructor keep from convincing himself (or herself) that he's doing a great job when he really isn't? I'm not so worried about the converse, it seems to me that that particular scenario would take care of itself.