Often Scholars are reluctant to take feedback for their work from time to time. Feedback is very important for PhD work but the reasons for hesitation can be many. Here are few:
- Guilt for burdening the supervisor: Often scholars believe that asking for continual feedback from supervisor means burdening them with unnecessary work. More so when the supervisor is the super busy category and does not like to be bothered much in his busy schedule. Overcome this guilt completely by reaffirming to yourself that providing supervision in your PhD is a voluntary role that have involved themselves into and giving you time to time feedback is a part of their role and when you are ready to hear what you need to, it makes things easier for them than difficult.
- Non availability of supervisor: Often after multiple, innumerable tries, there is a non-involvement and non-availability of the supervisor. Once the scholar gets tired of trying often there is no way to get feedback. Don’t do that as feedback is crucial for the quality of your work, try alternative sources to get authentic and regular feedback or involve the authorities in your department for necessary action, if need be.
- A sense of insecurity about your own work: Keep it in your mind, not for once but forever that it is a normal feeling with any task that falls in the creative genre. How much ever suspicious you are about your work, not discussing it isn’t the way out. Rather, for work that it is immaculate it is necessary that it goes through the stages of continuous evaluation so that the weaknesses can be eliminated and the strengths can be further improvised to add value.
- Wanting to keep yourself safe: Feedback is often linked to negativity and most supervisors when they do the task of giving feedback, only look for the negatives without ever mentioning the strengths of the document. Scholars fear that and refrain from showing their work to anyone. Don’t seek a more balanced feedback from everyone, often the reason that people give only the negatives is that they believe the positives are already known to you. You still can ask for the good points in the document candidly. There isn’t any harm in that.
- Waste of time and effort: Many a times the supervisors just shirt their responsibility by giving feedback that is completely useless and not worthy of taking seriously. Sometimes they just give a nod at everything a scholar shows to them. Don’t let it deter you , go for feedback with specific questions in your mind to trigger the thinking caps of your supervisor and make him give more worthy feedback.