I don't want to polish text that's just going to get deleted.
That was my attitude about early drafts of papers that became my thesis. I wanted my advisors to read my work when it was relatively immature so that I could get reassurance that I was on the right track. I wanted to know the content was ok before I really got my hands dirty with the presentation.
But, as much as I wanted to do things that way, my advisors were unable to read early drafts for content without getting distracted by style. They would comment on all sorts of relatively minor things that were low on my priority list (although I'm sure they would say the problems were not minor). For example, tables with the gridlines showing, text that wasn't super well crafted. I would think, I'm not going to spend the time to format that table if you're going to tell me I should cut it. But it just couldn't work that way.
I had to learn to suck it up and make my drafts better before I handed them over for comments. My advisors sometimes wouldn't really get into the challenges of improving content if there were easier problems to fix. And they are so slow at reading my stuff that I realized I needed to make it as painless as possible for them. Further, their slowness means I want them to have to read fewer drafts, so making the first one as good as possible means less time waiting for feedback. Now I do everything I possibly can before I hand over a draft: journal-specific formatting, contact info, keywords, figures, whatever. I want them to know I'm serious about the draft so that they're serious with their feedback.
Interestingly, my postdoc advisor is great at reading early drafts. He has no problem ignoring presentation problems and commenting on the direction of a document. I'm not sure if it's because I'm so much better at the presentation now, making my drafts better and him feel like he doesn't have as much to teach me about writing, or if it's because he's not the perfectionist that my old advisor is. Probably both.
6 comments:
ah... I so recognize this. For me, there is a HUGE hurdle to care about writing well if I think that "someone will just slam me down anyway and I'll need to redo it all". I ended up doing more of a "presentation of figures with an outline" as a first draft and then I 'knew' better what my PI thought about the paper/draft/idea.
Key thing, great you got it better!! :)
My PhD supervisor wouldn't read anything that wasn't "almost perfect", so I had to learn -- but it also meant it took a while until he got something. In contrast, I show my post-doc supervisor lots of figures that are barely out of the "raw numbers" stage, meaning I get lots of early feedback, which I think is great. With text I'm still rather perfectionistic though ;)
This is a really helpful way to think of it- make it as easy and painless and possible so they can focus on what really matters. Thanks!
As someone who edits a lot of manuscripts, proposals, and other documents written by everyone from the newest of grad students up to full professors, I have to agree that even though I try to edit for "big picture" mistakes first, if the draft is full of typos, grammatical errors and other common first draft problems, it's really hard to focus on the overall content and structure - the other stuff just distracts me way too much. I know you're supposed to do different rounds of review starting with the big stuff and ending with a proofread, but I just can't do it!
I just came across your blog today, and this point is so relevant to me right now. My mentor *claims* she wants early drafts and then gets completely distracted by the minor issues and calls it "sloppy" and tries to change it to be more pretty - when really I just want help with the content!
However, I worked with one other faculty mentor (has had more experience with students and grant writing) - she wanted very basic ideas and main points and totally ignored minor problems. This was so helpful and I felt the final product actually sounded more like "me" and the feedback helped me shape the ideas better.
Can mentors be trained to work better?
I am moving to my postdoc soon - as soon as I get this dissertation completed and defended - and wonder how can I learn what PD mentor is like?
Oh I feel this right now! I definitely find it easier to have PIs comment on early drafts of things, but they get bogged down in formatting that I know needs changing, I just don't want to spend ages changing everything if they are going to wade in there with bloody 'track changes' which just makes a mess of everything!
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