Week 8 Comments and Feedback

    The process of receiving feedback can be a little bit tough for me. As I mentioned at the beginning of the semester, the growth mindset is not one that I'm particularly accomplished at embracing. I'm much more likely to prefer a letter grade, and then I use that to try and figure out what my professors think about me. I know that's a really unhealthy attitude, so I'm trying to get better at receiving feedback this semester. If I'm being honest, I do think this class has helped with that. Even if I struggle with criticism, my favorite comments have actually been the ones that give me notes for improvement. I think that the structure of this class is really well-suited to students leaving kind and constructive feedback, and that's been helpful

    I'm not sure if my feedback comments are helpful or not. I try to use the WWW way of giving feedback, but I do often fall into the "compliment sandwich" style of giving feedback. That being said, it has been helpful to use WWW because it makes me a lot more concrete in the feedback that I give, which is both more helpful and (I think) less hurtful. I worry that my fellow students won't like it if I'm too critical, so I try to choose just one thing that I think could be improved upon, and I do think that that works as a strategy. Chances are that, with the amount of feedback we all get through the randomizer, someone else will notice the same things that I do, and it's not as helpful to repeat feedback.

    I am really enjoying getting to connect with other people through writing comments on their blogs. I wish there were a more centralized way for us to reach back out to people who leave comments on our blogs, e.g. by directly responding to the comments instead of just commenting on their blogs. I would really like that as a way to get to know the same people through conversation, not going back and forth in a moderately disjointed way. But we do comment on so many people's posts, that, without a good notification system, it doesn't seem to be possible to do that.

(cheezburger, Laura Gibbs)

    I chose this meme because I think it confronts the approach I tend to have when it comes to feedback. I let myself take constructive criticism a little too seriously and it tends to stick around for longer than it should. I just really like the way this points out the flaws in that mindset, which is an opportunity I have for growth.