It’s Black Friday
It’s Black Friday, our end-of-semester evaluation of the Computer Science Ph.D. students here at Carnegie Mellon. All of the faculty involved in advising Ph.D. students in our program gather together for two full days of meetings, to discuss the progress of each student — about 160 of them, more or less. As a group, we write a letter to each student, giving our evaluation of their progress through the program.
In parallel, the students have a big all-day party. Perhaps out of guilt or a need to keep the faculty happy, the students provide the faculty with a huge bucket of beer. For some reason, the students seem to think that Arrogant Bastard Ale is the appropriate choice. ;-)
Black Friday is really important to us. We consider it one of the great traditions of the Computer Science Department, one that is so important that even Jeannette Wing (former department head and now the very busy director of the computer science directorate at NSF) comes back to attend. It has been copied by lots of departments at other universities. The reason for the name “Black Friday”, besides the fact that it is held on the Friday of finals week, is that some students, um, get kicked out of the program. While an outsider might think that this would be a somber day, in fact it turns out to be a day of celebration. For me, it is the one day each semester where I get to see each student’s face (a photo is projected on the screen) and hear the relevant faculty brag about or fret over each student’s accomplishments and challenges.
Yes, it’s a long meeting, but the opportunity to think earnestly about each student and to share ideas and values (and beer) with all of the faculty is well worth it.
Peter Lee @ December 19, 2008