The Ultimate Confidence Booster
I remember the first paper I wrote in graduate school. Actually, that’s not true. I remember the sinking feeling in my gut when I got that paper back from my professor. This professor was different that my undergraduate teachers. Those teachers, if they read my work at all, scrawled a grade across the top and maybe offered a single comment: “Good work.” When I entered graduate school, this was all I knew about my writing. Apparently, I was able to do “good work.”
Nobody had ever explicitly taught me how to write or explained to me that writing can be an exhilarating, tedious, and turbulent endeavor. So when my professor wrote, “You have a good start to this paper, but you need to elaborate your ideas,” I felt crushed. I didn’t really know how to use this information. Just getting back a paper with so much of someone else’s writing on it was confusing.
Fortunately, the class was small, the professor was approachable. She made it clear that the feedback she gave me was meant to help me grow as a writer. Four years and a dissertation later, I have come to recognize and value the importance of getting feedback on my writing. Actually, it’s more than that. I don’t just value feedback. I am here to announce that in the years that I wrote my graduate school papers and, importantly, my doctoral dissertation, I became a full on writing-feedback junkie.
When I think about growing my writing confidence, I think that the single most important factor that improved my confidence was the feedback that I received on my in-process writing. Notice that I used the word received. People could have been giving me feedback all along, but until I came to see that feedback as a form of love (and I don’t use that word lightly), I think my confidence, and therefore my writing, would have remained stunted.
Here’s why feedback is the number one thing I think doctoral students need to grow their writing confidence.
Feedback means that someone has valued your ideas enough to actually consider them. At its core, writing is a form of communication. Even when we write to our journals, we are still communicating with someone (ourselves). Writers write because we hope deep down that we are saying something worthwhile. If someone reads and responds to our writing in meaningful ways, this means that we have found an actual audience for our work. Especially when we are embracing new modes of writing that require a set of complex skills forms like, oh I don’t know, a dissertation. If someone is willing to wade through our first attempts and help us untangle our thoughts, we can be grateful that they care enough to try to help us. Being heard can help us feel more confident, like we actually have something worthwhile to say if we can just figure out how to say it well.
Feedback can help us discover and embody our authentic academic voice. Especially in academia, we are tasked with writing that may or may not feel authentic to who we are. We come to doctoral programs with preconceived notions about what academic writing is and isn’t. We try to sound smart. We use ten dollar words and write convoluted, fluff-filled sentences that are the verbal equivalent of this:
M.C. Escher, 1960, Lithograph
Escher’s lithograph is called “Ascending and Descending.” There’s only one problem. It doesn’t (at least, not fully). While Escher was playing with visual impossibilities in his art, that’s exactly the opposite of what we need our sentences to do. We want readers to ascend and descend the staircases of our ideas with relative ease. Feedback can help us clarify our ideas so that our rationales, findings, discussions are clear and readable. We amplify our voices by utilizing the targeted, on-point feedback that we receive. Our confidence grows because we are honing our voices and using them well.
Feedback can help us pinpoint our areas where we need to improve. If we are not confident in our writing, it is because we are telling ourselves stories about our writing ability. Sometimes those stories are completely false. Feedback can help us see what we are already doing well. Using that information, we can play to our strengths. Sometimes, though, those stories may have a grain of truth to them. For instance, I really do struggle with writing overly-long, complicated sentences that shroud the meaning of what I am trying to say. I need someone to tell me to reign in my keystrokes and get to the point. I would rather someone engage me and help me than be left to my own devices. Feedback leads me to revise, and I feel more confident about the final version of the writing I send into the world.
A quick caveat: Feedback only improves our confidence if is actually good. Those giving the feedback may be doing so with the best of intentions, but the feedback may not be clear, or it might be lopsided — only pointing out what we have done wrong. That’s not the kind of feedback I am talking about. The kind of feedback that engenders confidence leaves us feeling encouraged in some way. Even if we feel a little deflated at first, we are willing to return to our dissertation writing and try again.
The kind of feedback I am describing
- is targeted
- tells us, specifically, what to do
- helps us understand how to do what is being asked of us
For example, a helpful reviewer might say, “Clarify this paragraph by using more specific language. You mention that ‘many people’ struggle with their writing. Which people? World War II veterans? Graduate students? Who are these people and how do they struggle? Provide your reader with details to ground us in the specifics of your study.”
Lest we are too harsh on reviewers, remember that many faculty members are not trained to offer writing feedback. Therefore, in order to get feedback that is actually useful, we need to ask for what we need. Lobbing a chapter over to a reviewer and saying, “So, what do you think?” is not helpful, and you are more likely to get nondescript comments that leave you befuddled or just plain sad.
It’s okay if you don’t know exactly what to ask, but ask something. You might try, “Can you show me a few places where I am doing something well in my writing? Can you also point out the three things I need to do next to improve my writing?” Better yet, you can use a checklist and ask your reviewer for targeted feedback. Here’s a sample of a list we use at Dissertation by Design to review chapter 1 of a dissertation. Notice how in the right-hand column the writer asked the review for clear guidance. Be like this savvy writer and ask for targeted feedback.
Criterion | Question/Comments for Reviewer |
Overall: Chapter 1 is written in a way that is well structured, has a logical flow, uses correct paragraph structure, uses correct sentence structure, uses correct punctuation, and uses correct APA format. | I’ve struggled with organization throughout writing chapter 1. Would you please share where I have and haven’t succeeded in my goal of writing in ways that are well organized? Any thoughts on how I can improve the organization? |
Introduction | |
Dissertation topic is introduced and the value of conducting the study is discussed. | |
An organizing statement for the chapter is provided. | I’m concerned my introduction is still too broad. Would you mind telling me what you think and how I might improve the specificity of my writing in chapter 1? |
Background of the Study | |
The background section of Chapter 1 provides a brief history of the problem. | |
Provides a summary of results from the prior empirical research on the topic. | |
Using results, societal needs, recommendations for further study, or needs identified in three to five research studies (primarily from the last three years), the learner identifies the stated need, called a gap. | I think I identified the gap. Would you mind highlighting where you think my gap statement is and what you think I’m arguing is the gap? If it’s not clear, please tell me and give me any pointers that you can. |
Builds a justification for the current study, using a logical set of arguments supported by citations. |
Once you get that feedback, thank the person who gave it to you. Receive that feedback for what it is — an attempt to help you improve your writing. Then, get to work using that feedback. Trust that you can learn from it (you can). It may take several tries. This is normal. But you really can use feedback to improve your writing confidence – oh, and your actual writing, too.
Cheering you on, Desi
This blog post was written by Dr. Desi Richter, Dissertation Coach