Navigating Feedback as a Graduate Student
As a graduate student, feedback is often a major component of your learning and professional development. At the same time, it can be challenging to ask for and implement feedback. Perhaps you’ve contemplated asking your advisor for feedback on a new project idea but find yourself never feeling “ready” for that conversation. Or maybe you notice panic rising in your chest as you review comment after comment on a draft that you thought was almost finished. Being strategic about how you ask for and address feedback can help you leverage other people’s expertise while also maintaining momentum in your work.
Asking for Feedback
Reflect on what you need
Before you make a feedback request, first consider why you are wanting feedback in the first place. Stone and Heen (2014) argue that there are three types of feedback:
- Appreciation: acknowledging a person’s strengths
- Coaching: providing direction and helping someone learn
- Evaluation: assessing someone’s performance against a set of standards
Because feedback can serve multiple purposes, clarifying this purpose for yourself (and for the person from whom you’re asking for feedback) can ensure that the feedback you receive is timely and aligned with your goals. For instance, say you’re giving a presentation tomorrow and you ask a friend if you can rehearse it with them and get their feedback. If your friend takes a coaching approach and gives you extensive suggestions (which you probably won’t have time to implement anyway), you might feel frustrated if what you were really looking for was appreciation to help build your confidence.
You might also consider how feedback might help you make particular decisions or move you forward in your process. For instance, are you looking for help choosing an idea to pursue, making sure your presentation is appropriate for a particular audience, or determining whether your paper is ready to submit to a journal? Feedback can happen at any stage of your work, so consider where decisions or sticking points might emerge for you along the way and how you can build in feedback to help you maintain momentum.
Identify who you want to ask for feedback
For many graduate students, their academic advisor is their “go to” person when it comes to feedback. While your advisor can provide valuable perspective, other people may also be able to lend their expertise. Consider whether there are other people within your broader mentoring network who may be able to help, such as peers, postdocs, and faculty. There are also campus resources that can provide support as you navigate writing projects and presentations, such as the Hume Center for Writing and Speaking and the Technical Communication Program. For additional ideas on identifying resources within your network, see our Grad Academic Milestones guide.
Prepare for feedback
Before reaching out with your feedback request, you’ll need to determine what you want to share with the person/people you’ve selected. Consider:
- What do you need to complete in order for you to get the feedback you want?
- What doesn’t need to be complete?
It can feel vulnerable to share work that isn’t fully finished or polished, and it can be appealing to hold off on asking for feedback until you have a finalized piece of work to share. However, it’s often easier and more efficient to make changes while the work is still fairly malleable. You may feel more reluctant to cut a section of your paper or slides from a presentation if you’ve already spent lots of time formulating and editing the content versus when it’s still an early draft.
Make the request
When asking for feedback, you may want to give the person who is providing feedback some specific questions to consider or areas to focus on. While you might be inclined to keep the feedback request open-ended (e.g., “Let me know what you think!"), providing some structure can help the person giving the feedback better understand where you currently are in your process and can lead to feedback that is more aligned with your goals. Providing a structured feedback request might look something like this:
“In this draft, I’ve focused on __________ but have not yet __________. Given where I’m at in the process, I’d particularly like to get your feedback on the following areas: ____________.”
Also, be sure to discuss the logistics of how the feedback process will unfold, particularly if you are working on a longer term project and may want feedback from the same person at multiple time points. Here is an example of how you could start that conversation:
“I’d love to get your feedback as I work on this project. Could we talk about what that process could look like?”
During the conversation, you might discuss the following questions:
- How much advance notice does the person providing feedback need?
- In what modality will the feedback be provided? (e.g., orally, written comments)
- If you are working on a collaborative or supervised project, what are the expectations for integrating feedback? For instance, how much autonomy do you have to make decisions about how to implement the feedback? What is the timeline for revising the work?
Receiving Feedback
Managing emotions
Receiving feedback can bring up strong emotions. You might feel frustrated and defensive if you disagree with the feedback or disappointed if your work wasn’t received as positively as you had hoped. If you’re having trouble integrating the feedback you received because strong emotions are getting in the way, these are a few strategies to try:
- Aim to understand the feedback: Rather than trying to immediately respond to the feedback you’ve received, it can be helpful to first clarify your understanding of the feedback. Consider trying to summarize what you heard or read (e.g., “It sounds like the main changes you want to see are x, y, and z. Is that right?”) and asking for more information (e.g., “Can you say more about…?”). Clarifying your understanding gives you time to process both the suggestions and the emotions that may accompany them before you decide how you want to move forward.
- Reframe: Often, feedback can prompt automatic negative thoughts about ourselves or our relationship to the person giving the feedback (for instance, “I’m a bad writer,” or, “My advisor probably thinks I’m not cut out for this program”). If you find yourself thinking, “What does this feedback say about me?”, try this reframe: “What does this feedback say about what’s important to this other person?” For instance, if you received feedback on the clarity of your paper’s introduction, rather than interpreting the feedback as saying, “My writing is so disorganized,” a response to the reframing question might look like this: “What’s important to my advisor is that my introduction contains a clear problem statement.” For more ideas on shifting automatic negative thoughts, check out our guide on Challenging Unhelpful Thinking in Graduate School.
- Get perspective: In many cases, you don’t necessarily have to implement feedback immediately. It’s okay to take some time for your emotions to settle and then revisit the feedback later. It can also be helpful to get someone else’s point of view on the feedback you received. You might ask a friend or mentor what they see as the main themes from the feedback you received. It’s easy to focus on critical comments or areas to improve without acknowledging areas of our work that are actually going well, and talking to someone else about the feedback may help you to get a more balanced view.
Implementing feedback
Once you’re ready to apply the feedback you’ve received, it can sometimes be difficult to know where to begin, particularly if you’ve received feedback from multiple people. Here are a few tips to help you get started:
- Organize the feedback: Identify themes or categories within the feedback and sort the suggestions accordingly. This could include categories related to particular components of your work (for instance, “results section” or “slide design”), or they could be broader themes (for instance, “feasibility considerations”). If you’ve received feedback from multiple people, it can also be helpful to create a spreadsheet or other visual organizer to compare perspectives. For instance, you might create a column for each person who has provided feedback and rows for different components of the work. Adding people’s comments to the relevant cells can help you see where there is agreement or disagreement.
- Determine your stance towards the feedback: Before you apply the feedback you’ve received, you may need to make some decisions about the extent to which you will make the suggested changes. This may depend on the interpersonal dynamics at play (for instance, if the feedback is coming from a journal reviewer or your friend), practical considerations such as your overall timeline and feasibility of making the changes, and other factors. If you’re not sure what feedback to prioritize, it may be helpful to consult with your advisor or another mentor.
- Turn each piece of feedback into specific tasks: Often, you may receive feedback that requires multiple actions to address. For instance, if someone suggests that you reference a particular article in your work, the associated tasks might include the following: 1) read the article, 2) note key takeaways and how they apply to your work, 3) integrate your notes about the article into your paper, 4) add the article citation to your works cited section. Turning the feedback into small, concrete tasks can make it easier to take action and see progress as you address the feedback.
Works cited:
Stone, D., & Heen, S. (2014). Thanks for the feedback: The science and art of receiving feedback well. Viking.
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Navigating Feedback as a Graduate Student
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