TITLE: How seriously should a graduate student take teaching evaluations?
QUESTION [17 upvotes]: Pretty much the question in the title.  If a grad student gets bad reviews as a TA, how much does that hurt them later? How much do good reviews help? What if the situation is more complex? (For instance, bad reviews when TAing, but good reviews when actually teaching/lecturing a summer course).
Edit: I asked this question with the situation of a student hoping for a career at research universities in mind, however, I am also interested in other cases.
Edit: In your answer, please mention what your background is: have you served on hiring committees?  Are you reporting just what you've heard?  Were you successful/unsuccessful in a job search and were told that your teaching evals did/did not make a difference?

REPLY [4 votes]: You should keep all your evaluations and keep track of them.
Are you improving over time ?
Are you improving in some areas over time ?
Are you better/worse in some topics than others ?
Take every comment with a grain of salt.
Some students will hate you and/or your teaching style no matter how you teach
either because they hate the topic, hate the class time, hate you, or hate your style
of teaching/grading.
[It is hard to give someone the highest possible evaluation when you get a 'D' in
the class.]
Look for patterns in the comments and accept that you cannot teach in such a way
to please all possible students.
Strive for clarity and helpful pacing.
Even if you end up at a Research University or Lab you will have to either teach
Lectures or Grad Seminars or give talks and the clearer and better paced they are
the better for everyone involved.