Accepting and incorporating feedback

In general, the first step to being able to incorporate feedback is to set aside the hurt feelings, the defensiveness, and the anger, that come with getting feedback on a project into which you’ve poured so much. Even the best supervisors and reviewers will say things you just don’t want to hear. Of course, most students don’t have perfect graders and some students have terrible reviewers. In some cases, it is frustratingly obvious that your grader is not reading your work carefully and isn’t interested enough in you or work to do their job well.

Once you’ve set aside your personal feelings, read the comments again. Think about them together, what do they reveal about what the grader is looking for? Are they rejecting your basic premise? Are they asking you to improve the readability of your essay with better transitions and more detail? Are they telling you to improve your research background? In some cases, the comments might not create a cohesive critique, but just require individual responses to each note. However, if there is a theme to the notes, you can learn something about what your grader is looking for and how you can achieve it within the parameters of your own interests in your work.

Feedback is rarely the travesty it feels like in the first minutes or hours after reading it. It can create a renewal of interest and passion for your work; it can clarify your vision and open up new doors for research and understanding. Sometimes feedback will initially seem to require a major rewrite, but that is rarely the case. If you need clarification from your reviewer, don’t ask right away. Let the review sit for a day and see if it becomes clearer to you. If your reviewer isn’t helpful, consider going to the writing center for support. PowerPapers.com can also help.