Ten out of ten is for over-achievers

I spent half an hour yesterday, racking my brains, trying to fill in a five page appraisal form (all blanks, no squares or charts to tick to ease the pain) for a trainee who worked with me for six months.

It is incredibly difficult to fill five pages without repeating yourself, especially if the person you are assessing happens to be a good worker. I can imagine myself ranting on for ages if that person is incompetent ("First of all, 'separate' is spelled with an 'a'..."), but as it is, this person is conscientious to fault, extremely hard-working, efficient and best of all, nice.

And there are only so many times you can say 'conscientious to fault, extremely hard-working, efficient and nice' etc. etc. without sounding like a prat. Eventually on page four I gave up and wrote:
"X is an extremely hard-working person. Please see my comments relating to her research skills."
I had reached my limit on my stock of recyclable phrases concerning efficiency, openness, teamwork and all the rest of it.

Then I thought, 'Maybe they [the partners who will be assessing X as well] will think I am being biased in favour of X?" So I tried to come up with her shortcomings from page four onwards:
"X is yet to learn how to handle negotiations."
But X is a trainee, for crying out loud. You can't blame a trainee for not handling negotiations! And anyway, why should X handle the negotiation when you, a qualified lawyer, was in the room? So I scrubbed that out and wrote:
"X could be more confident in her participation in negotiations."
But that sounded like criticism, which is not what I was intending it to be. I ended up writing next to that:
"I am sure X will be able to develop her confidence further as she is exposed to more meetings."
That sounded lame, but at least it wasn't a critical remark.

I wonder if my bosses are having the same problem of finding it difficult to write my appraisal form:
"How many times can you say 'J-A is so wunnerful'?"

Ha. As if.

They're probably sitting in their rooms, fiddling with the new Blackberry, thinking:
"How can we tell her she is slacking off without making her all hormonal? The last time I checked, they were throwing shoes in the Korean Parliament. Should I just ignore it (again) this year?"