Fortunate is the student who, through four Amherst years, hasn't encountered a professor whose expectations confound him. As the semester draws to a close, most students will hope to tackle their finals with a fairly good understanding of what the professor wants. Unfortunately, that is often not the case. Feedback from professors span the spectrum from sparse to copious; Professor of Political Science Hadley Arkes, for instance, is well-known for penning comments that exceed a page on papers.

We appreciate the effort many professors channel into providing adequate criticism for their students. At the same time, however, we think other professors have distinct room for improvement. Several lines of adjectival commentary without explicit illumination of flaws, for instance, don't help students in writing a better essay. In classes with only two papers before the final, these are the only two chances to tweak problems. By the same token, exams that are returned without answer keys or comments tend to be poor indicators of the student's conceptual failings.

Some of the burden for eliciting criticism naturally falls on the student. We believe making appointments for office hours or sending a brief e-mail to professors represent simple ways of doing just that. Yet professors are not always available; office hours can be rushed affairs, with students lining up for 10 minutes of the professor's time. Other professors do not reply to email quickly.

The primary objective of any class should always be the effective education of the students; we believe communication between the educator and the educated is key to this enterprise. There is currently no universal system at the College to address the sort of gaps in communication previously illustrated.

We think that a desirable solution would be to oblige professors to fill out a comprehensive evaluation for students who ask for it. Of course, this would help the student only if it was submitted early, but not so early that the professor has barely had time to evaluate the student. We propose sometime in the seventh or eighth week of the semester, or a date before the penultimate paper is due.

The main advantage of such a system is that it rewards students who care enough to improve their work but who otherwise find it difficult to draw constructive criticism from their professors. In particular, the optional nature of this exercise means that the amount of additional paperwork shouldn't overwhelm the professor. For the professor, it would also effectively identify the students in the class who take their self-improvement seriously.

The frustrations of negotiating through classes with unresponsive professors aren't necessarily an inevitability; with a bit of prodding, the value of these classes can increase manifold.