Making the most of criticism can be painful.

Dealing with academic criticism

Many have asked me how I deal with rejection in academia. Here’s a bit about my history with rejection, the dysfunctional fears and self-criticisms that have shaped that history, and my strategies for dealing with it in academia and in life.

Since I was a child, criticism has been my greatest fear. And it still is. Whether it was a teacher scolding a decision I made, a parent disappointed in me, a peer review teardown of my work, or a critical reply on Twitter, criticism makes me feel mortified, worthless, and diminished. Even today, when someone judges me as having failed, I feel it for far too long, far too deeply. Critique is like a little neuro-parasitic insect that digs its way into my brain, disrupting my sleep, controlling my behavior.

I think it this constant fear of critique that has led me to so much success—at least in the narrow ways that our world defines success. I always did exactly what my primary school teachers said. I learned everything I could in middle school and high school, only getting one unfortunate B+ in government because I was more interested in the friend I was sitting next to than the terrible teacher. My professors in college made it very clear that success meant 4.0’s in classes, engaging in research, and being curious and clever, so I did all of those things and more, shaping myself into the academic that my mentors expected. And in my doctoral studies at Carnegie Mellon, success meant publishing, so I submitted 20 papers to peer review, all of them accepted on the first try. And while my perfect streak of publishing inevitably ended as I started my career as a professor, I kept failure at bay, publishing most of my work on first submission and the rest of it on second.

On the outside, this must have looked like magic. So much success, so little rejection, and no hint of emotions of struggle or stress. And yet, inside my mind has always been the most intense struggle to avoid failure. When I write something or create something, I hear so many voices. The voice of every reviewer who’s judged my work. The voice of every teacher who’s ever given me feedback. The voice of my parents and family. The voice of my doctoral advisor and his overwhelming ability to find every single flaw, both fatal and trivial, and express it in succinct red ink. And of course, my own voice, which is far more critical of my work than any of these other voices. When I get feedback, my mind is a cacophony of critique, telling me every little thing that’s broken about what I’ve done.

All of this should have led to either burnout or perfectionism. But somehow it didn’t lead to either. It led instead to a process for dealing with criticism. One that prevented me from being paralyzed by insecurity, but also one that prioritized action over endless refinement. I think it emerged as a was for me to manage my emotions while also managing my scarce time.

The strategy goes something like this:

1. I receive some feedback. Maybe it’s a paper decision, a grant decision, or a critical email from a colleague or student. Maybe it’s about something I’ve created, or maybe it’s about me and my behavior.
2. I schedule time to read it, knowing it’s going to be painful. I push through the pain and get to the end.
3. I give myself emotional space to feel what I’m going to feel. This might be a minute, an hour, a day, or longer. I don’t know how long I’m going to feel it, so I wait. I listen carefully to what my emotions are saying. It’s usually saying irrational stuff like you’re a failure, you’re worthless, how could you do something so stupid.
4. I reflect on those feelings. I usually come to the conclusion that my emotions are wildly off base. I’m not a failure, I just made a mistake. I’m not worthless, I can just do better. I’m not stupid, I just overlooked something. These are just normal human flaws.
5. I print the feedback on paper. This lets me hold it in my hand, and take it to somewhere I feel safe and calm.
6. I re-read the feedback, this time without emotions distracting me from the content of the message. As I do, I highlight every positive and negative critique.
7. I read the positive critiques and affirm myself. I did a good job! Other people liked it! My instincts were right: this is good work.
8. I transcribe the negative feedback into a text editor. This lets me manipulate it.
9. I organize the negative feedback. I group related feedback, I find themes, I prioritize it by severity.
10. I translate the negative feedback into a to do list. This turns all of my opportunities for improvement into action.
11. I make a plan to complete the to do list. When will I do this work? Does it require some thought first? Who can I talk to about the feedback, to help better interpret and respond to it?
12. I do everything on the list. Checking off each item feels like I’ve dealt the feedback; it’s gone after that, both literally and emotionally.
13. I review my changes, whether it’s a revised paper or a change in my behavior. Do I think the work is better? Am I better? Would the people giving feedback think they are better?
14. I move on. At this point, I’ve processed the emotions, I’ve improved my work and myself, and I’m done.

For small things, this might all happen in a minute. For example, the other day, I said something in a class I was teaching, and a student wrote a note about the way I’d phrased something and how much it had confused them. It took me a minute to read it, feel guilty for confusing them, realize that I shouldn’t feel guilty, I should just do better. I re-read the email, copied the relevant critiques, translate that into a list of improvements to my lecture, add that to my list of improvements for the next time I offer the class, and moved on.

For bigger things, this might take years. For example, way back when I started as a professor, a colleague who was mentoring me told me that I was “aloof” and I should be less aloof if I wanted tenure. In that moment, I suppressed my emotions, but later that night, I let myself feel them. What did he mean? Haven’t I always been aloof? Is that really going to impact my tenure case? I spent years reflecting on those feelings, trying to figure out if there was something I was doing wrong, or if that’s just who I was. I remember writing that feedback down in my diary, trying to make sense of it, re-reading my diary, and interrogating my behavior around my colleagues. It wasn’t until 10 years later when I was in therapy, when I’d organized my grand theory of my aloofness, that I realized: oh, I’m trans, and I’m aloof because I don’t want people to see that. So I made my to do list: 1) accept that I’m trans, 2) tell others, 3) let people see the real me, 4) less aloof. (Apologies for the horribly reductive personal narrative for rhetorical soundness!)

But in academia, most things aren’t big or small. They’re medium-sized. And this strategy that I use to process that medium-sized feedback has been really helpful, at least for me, and the fears and aspirations that drive me. And this strategy, as oddly systematic as it is, has become a kind of emotional comfort for dealing with these medium-sized critiques. It’s a little structural shelter in which I can take in the critiques of the world and turn them in to learning and improvement. When I get feedback now, I know I can go to that shelter, and come out the other side intact and better for it.