Alex Morgan was exhausted. After a night of tossing and turning—haunted by stress dreams about mismatched parentheses in R—they had barely managed three hours of sleep. Now, their morning tea was doing its best to prop them up, but even caffeine had its limits.
Just as they were contemplating whether they could take a nap under their desk, their department chair, Professor Eva de Vries, appeared in their doorway. She carried a thick, A4-sized envelope with the solemnity of someone delivering a subpoena.
"Your student evaluations," she announced, placing it on Alex’s desk. "Good luck."
Alex stared at the envelope. It looked heavier than usual. Was there an entire dissertation in there? A comprehensive critique of their very existence? They took a deep breath, sipped their tea, and opened the packet.
The first few comments were reasonable enough:
Then, the contradictions began:
Alex took another sip of tea, bracing themselves. The comments about them personally were next:
Alex frowned. They had never attempted parkour, but now they wondered if they should.
Just as they reached the comment "The way Alex says ‘heteroskedasticity’ makes me uncomfortable", the door creaked open.
Professor Petrov, a full professor from across the hall, ambled in. He nodded at Alex before reaching across their office mate’s desk and grabbing a handful of sour gummies from the communal jar. "Evaluations, huh?" he said through a mouthful of candy. "Brutal."
Alex nodded wordlessly, watching him leave as if nothing had happened.
They turned back to the pile.
Alex massaged their temples. The last evaluation simply read: "Potato."
They stared at it for a long time.
And then they woke up. Their cheeks were wet with tears. The envelope was still on their desk, untouched.
Alex sighed, took another sip of tea, and opened it for real.
Let's write another humorous short story starring Alex Morgan. Have Alex' boss bring them a thick a4sized envelope filled with documents: Their intro to statistics course student evaluations. Have Alex drink tea to help them relax while reading the evaluations. Some of them are reasonable tips for improving the course (include some examples), some are about Alex. Make those either complimentary or negative, and make many of them contradict each other like 'talks too slow', 'goes too fast', 'too difficult' or 'not challenging enough'. Include 'Alex is kind but their voice is boring', and other silly feedback. Make the comments increasingly extreme and ridiculous. In the end, have Alex wake up from their dream. Somewhere during the story have a full professor interrupt Alex's embarrassment by coming to grab some candies from the jar on Alex' roommates desk (they share an office with two other assistant professors).
Include at the beginning of the story some details of them having being very tired from having a bad nights sleep. Make the professor who brings the documents a woman. Make the candy sour gummies rather than chocolate.
Give professor Jansen an eastern european name
get rid of the comments about memes. Include more very angry and extremely complimentary feedback instead. Make Alex cheeks wet with tears when they wake up.
Make the last 4 bullets less angry but more odd