Dealing with feedback
sometimes they are positive and sometimes they just aren´t…
First, I have to say that in my 30 years of life I heard a lot of opinions, criticism, feedback, positive comments…you name it, I heard it.
I heard about my personal life about several things like:
- my hair color ( I used to dye in pink, red,purple…)
- my piercings
- my tattoos
- my boyfriends
- the music that I liked
- my choice in the university course
- my career choice
- among others…
In the academic life it is not different, we are criticized the entire time. It can have several reasons:
- the writing is not good enough
- the methodology is not so sharp
- we are late in the schedule
- you didn´t chose a good reference
- you didn´t chose enough references
- and so on…
You kind of get used when it is your supervisors giving you feedback, it is their job to criticize you so…you can get better, faster, smarter, stronger, more bad ass in the end of your PhD ( or master, or other course).
The thing is…it is not easy.
It is not easy to hear feedback, specially when it is feedback saying that you need to improve something.
I´m not so mature to hear feedback. Some people really know how to listen to them and not take it personally…but in my head it is something like this:
- this is not good enough
- what I did was not good enough
- I´m not good enough
- I´m dumb
- what am I doing here?
- maybe I should go home & stay in bed forever
can you see the snowball effect here?
I know, I need to improve this, I need to be more mature, more adult about it…but it takes time, practice and learning to not taking things so personal or so seriously.
Sometimes, we just need to swallow our pride and accept that we need improvements in our work and in ourselves.
The PhD is a journey where you learn not only academic skills but also crucial personal skills (and maybe this is the most important part).
