Introduction to Natural Science Self-Evaluation Workshop IntroductionThe self-evaluation forms one component of your transcript (others being the programdescription and the faculty evaluation). It is extremely important that your self-evaluationbe well written. This is your chance to tell future employers or graduate schools aboutyour goals and accomplishments as a student. A badly written self-evaluation will reflectpoorly on you and may detract from any positive comments that your faculty makesabout your work. Please make good use of this workshop to write a self-evaluation thatyou can be proud of.Workshop InstructionsUse your completed self-evaluation worksheet as a guide for writing a draft of your self-evaluation. The questions in the worksheet are chosen and ordered to elicit responsesthat should be appropriate for including in your self-evaluation. You will also find it usefulto read the attached guidelines for writing self-evaluations (adapted from those postedon the academic advising website). If this is your first Evergreen evaluation, start withwhat brought you here and to this program and finish with a look to the future. Focus onyour learning and best academic accomplishments – do not make lists of everything thatyou did.When you have finished your self-evaluation have at least two people from your peerevaluation group read your self-evaluation and edit and sign it, using the guidelinesbelow. Incorporate suggested changes into a revised draft. Include both the revisionand the two edited copies of your evaluation in your portfolio, which is due on Thursday,December 6th.Guidelines on writing self-evaluations:1. You are literally writing your transcript! So the evaluation must be clean, neat,well typed, and free from spelling, punctuation, and syntax blunders. Really badcopies probably won’t be accepted by the Registrar’s Office, but some persistentstudents have managed to get sloppy evaluations accepted. They pay for thatlater when they discover to their horror that the transcript cannot be changed!Take no chances. If your are planning to leave the program at the end of thisquarter type your self-evaluation directly on to the Student Self-Evaluation form. 2. The self-evaluations taken as a whole should provide a running account of yourACADEMIC PROGRESS through Evergreen. Readers who start with the firstevaluation and read through to the final one, should be given an autobiographyof your work here. Why did you choose to come to Evergreen? What were youprepared to do? What did you want to do? Why did you want to do it? Why didyou choose this program at this time? What did you learn? How have youchanged? grown? developed? Are your goals still the same? What do you planto do next? why? The first evaluation in the transcript should provide all thepreliminary information: “I came to Evergreen from a Community College inArkansas, where I had concentrated on secretarial skills and accounting. Afterworking in the Florist business for 10 years, and saving a modest amount ofmoney, I decided to move to Centralia, Washington, where I had family. Ienrolled in Evergreen largely to round out my education and to study all thosethings I had been forced to ignore back in Arkansas... I joined the Multi-culturalFractions program because I had no past experience with mathematics, but Ihoped to learn how to...” Every evaluation thereafter should start with a similarstatement of your reasons for taking this particular program. Each should endwith a statement about what you plan to do next: “Now that I have satisfied all mycuriosity about Inca mathematics, and have decided to do studio art next,because I hope that all that work on mathematics will help me to...” The finalevaluation should sum up the entire Evergreen experience, not just comment onthat final program. What has your work at Evergreen meant to you? What haveyou accomplished? What have you yet to do? Do you want to get a job? go tograduate school? take a long vacation? sell surfing equipment in Hawaii? 3. Self-evaluations would be quite long if you tried to cover everything thathappened. You can’t cover everything so you must select carefully. Things toleave OUT of evaluations: a) Mere lists of your activities and accomplishments– these are neverconvincing: someone who never read the books and who sleptthrough every seminar can make a list of books he supposedly read.b) Negative comments about yourself, your own work, your own abilities.You can acknowledge poor work, but should let the faculty evaluationdescribe it. It is appropriate to mention areas that you are working toimprove, but you should concentrate on what is positive. c) Negative comments about the program, its format, its faculty, yourfellow students... Save this stuff for the evaluation you write of thefaculty! Your future employer or graduate school doesn’t need tohear this, and it can do you great damage in their eyes.d) Emotional statements, “feeling comments,” and excessive informationabout your personal life, unless such information is absolutely neededto explain why something went wrong, or why you did somethingdifferent from the other students. You can, of course, say that youwere pleased with something or not pleased, but be brief. e) Descriptions of the program – the faculty write the programdescription, you don’t need to repeat it.4. Things to put INTO evaluations: a) Explain what you hoped to accomplish, why you wanted toaccomplish it, and to what degree you met or surpassed yourexpectations. Choose the two or three (no more than three!) specificitems that were most important during the quarter, for whateverreasons, and discuss these in detail. If you make convincingstatements about these things, showing that you really do understandthem fully and well, then lists of other items, and general claims ofaccomplishment will be convincing.b) It is important to be CONVINCING, to make the reader see that youreally do know what you are talking about. Raise substantive issuesand make substantive statements.c) Mention accomplishments or learning you did not expect butnevertheless turned out to be very important to you. Explain why theywere important.d) While it is important to be positive and blow your own horn, you wantto avoid arrogance and boasting. Admitting deficiencies and/orfailures can actually strengthen a positive evaluation. Don’t go onabout these deficits at length - just admit