Research Advisor is an excellent writer and editor. She hasn't had many opportunities to edit student work and has said that it has been a learning process to figure out the best ways to help Awesome Technician (who is not a student but is a student-like young scientist) and I with our papers. I've noticed that she seems just a little uncomfortable giving me feedback on my writing as though she seems slightly afraid that I might get defensive. So far her comments have been nothing but constructive, really improving the paper, so there have been no problems. AT concurs.
Awesome Technician and I both minored in English in college and we credit the "workshopping" that was the centerpiece of many of our English courses with thickening our skins -- a good trait for budding scientists. My university required all students to take a junior-level writing course. My minor was essentially comprised of several of these courses (plus creative writing, linguistics, and an independent study writing my science department's alumni newsletter). I had business writing, exposition, and technical writing, each designed for juniors in other disciplines to improve their written communication skills by forcing them to write more. I didn't really get a whole lot out of these classes since they didn't progress -- each one was independent rather than working together in a sequence to build skills. After the first one it was pretty easy for me to bust out an A paper, whereas my classmates who were, say, engineering majors who never had to write more than a paragraph struggled. Thus I wasn't challenged to improve my skills, but I did gain from the practice.
There was one aspect of these classes that taught me some skills I didn't happen to learn anywhere else, however. They all had a workshopping component, where students read each other's work and discussed it as a group. It's one thing to receive the critiques of your friends and classmates, but it's really different to give it. Being on the other end (which is pretty rare at the undergrad level) teaches you lots of technical things about writing because the mistakes of others stick out at you in a way that your own flaws don't. It also gives you empathy for the person reviewing your writing because you know where they are coming from when they make certain types of comments. Most important for me now, it helps you take criticism in the way it was intended -- you have the experience to realize that the criticism isn't about you.
I'm very grateful to have an advisor who is sensitive to my ego. She can really shred a paper without being mean or even judgemental. In fact, I almost wish she were a little more to the point at times because I think it would make things go faster. I could take it.
10 comments:
Yeah, my advisor recently gave me the harshest criticism ever and it was frustrating but it really lit a fire under my ass. And I know what he said is true. He's really pushing me to become a better writer.
That's a nice post.
Have you told your PI that you can take the harsh critique, too? Maybe she has a hard time judging you, and it is common that people do take it serious. My advisor once told me he'd rather change the color of his changes in the "track changes" function in word from red to green, because that looks friendlier. I told her that I don't mind and not take critique personal, because that is how science works, and is the only way I can improve. I had the feeling that he appreciated it a lot.
I'm the same way. I always tell my advisor/mentors/bosses to just tell me what's wrong.
I won't say it doesn't hurt a little sometimes but I'm over it pretty quickly and really I just want to know how to make it better.
The workshopping sounds like a great experience. I can sometimes get pretty defensive about my work and get prickly when first hearing criticism - but once I've gone away and looked at the text again by myself, I really start to appreciate the feedback (well, most of the time). I've learned not to react to the initial critique - I really do need that time to go away and think it over before I can accept that the changes represent an improvement!
Hmmm, maybe there are some writing groups out there that would give that kind of feedback. Maybe on Craigslist. Hmmmm.
I loved the workshop components to my courses too - and I make them a part of each class I teach now. It's really helpful to learn how to take and give helpful criticism and use it or make it useful.
I've found that people are mostly shocked that I welcome constructive criticism and use it to make stuff better... people (meaning teachers, bosses, mentors) expect you'll cave and either get crazy mad or become a blubbering basketcase. They always seem surprised when I do neither - and just sit there taking notes. Bizarre to me.
Your workshop experience sounds great. I guess that's something German universities don't provide (yet -- they're changing), and it sounds like a good training.
I can take criticism from my boss ok, I think -- but I find it much harder when it comes from R... I should work on that.
The sure sign of a senior graduate student that is on their way to success is the ability to realize the criticism is not about them. Way to go EGF!
It sounds like we've all had to learn to get over it one way or another. :)
Cath, I'm surprised that getting feedback is difficult for you given that you must give a lot of it. It kind of blows my hypothesis that giving criticism helps you take it.
There's not much verbal communication around here, most editing is done by track changes in Word! I do sit down with students and postdocs etc. to go over their work in person - but my superiors don't tend to do the same with stuff that I've written. And it's the rare verbal feedback that I find the most difficult, because my initial natural inclination is to argue back. Getting edits back by email removes that urge and lets me approach the exercise more rationally.
I hope this makes sense to you, it only partially makes sense to me!
Having spent a long time having to assess scripts, I think that learning how to give constructive feedback is one of the most valuable skills you can learn, that can frankly be applied to all of life.
One of the fundamental rules I learnt way back in undergrad was: find something specific to compliment first. Then move to the constructive criticism. It's a pretty easy rule to follow and it's served me extremely well over the years.
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