Arise, ye wretched of the earth. Or, rather, students: Fill out your course evaluations.

It’s that time of the semester again where, at the university’s own request, students have an opportunity to inform their departments whether their professors, teaching assistants and other instructors performed up to par. After months of complaining on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, during lunch and under our breath to each other before, during and after class, now is the time to give the professionals a few pieces of our minds.

In all sincerity, however, course evaluations really are students’ main chance to evaluate their educators in a way that department heads and other academics and administrators in the colleges and university — who are responsible for tenure and promotions — will see. Course evaluations seem like a miniscule part of that process. You might well wonder: “What’s the point? I’m one student of thousands, and this professor is also one of thousands.”

Yet when an assistant professor is up for tenure or a lecturer’s contract is up for renewal, the content of the evaluations — positive, negative, ambivalent — matter. Along with the grades students receive (which is mostly a matter of student will and determination that become performance), evaluations are the real window into an instructor’s performance.

Course evaluations are the only part of the process that students — as students — can affect. Therefore, we have an obligation of sorts to participate. Somebody created those forms; somebody emailed them to students; and somebody will sort and read them after they’re sent back.

Every so often, the temptation arises to fill in the “extremely poor” or “extremely dissatisfied” bubble for everything, and leave nothing more than “This sucks!” in the comments space. But that’s not constructive. Even if a student’s evaluation is 100-percent supportive of the professor, there are still little individual improvements the man or woman can make to his or her teaching ability, and there are still individual qualities that deserve being singled out for specific praise.

Without feedback, nothing will — or can — change. That goes for course evaluations just as much as it goes for receiving a cold or undercooked steak at a restaurant or an event as monumental as a presidential election.

It would be taking the easy way out to ignore, during Dead Week and Finals Week, where projects and exams govern our lives and the semester reaches its resolution, the emails department secretaries are pushing out to students.

Enjoying any adventure, including that at Iowa State, requires taking some active steps rather than sitting back passively.