Conscious uncoupling

 

No, we are not talking of divorce, but consciously uncoupling yourself from your work.

One of the reasons academia can be exploitative is we - our personage - become identified with our research; it can be our passion, our identity. Some of us may be activists in a certain field, thus we are tricked into working for free because it’s our ‘calling’. Our vocation. In other words it can become a core part of who we are. Anyone who is not an academic finds this hilarious. They can see we have drunk the Kool-Aid. We can’t.

The problem with this stance is when you receive criticism about your work, all you hear is criticism of yourself. Your work is you, and that is why feedback is so difficult to take. Sometimes when we have graded students’ work, students can get very upset. We might write that the essay they submitted scored X because they did not do A, B, C, and that is exactly what you meant to say to that student. All they hear however is you are not up to scratch. And you never were. And you never will be. It is like telling someone their baby is ugly. No-one is going to react well.

It is important therefore, however passionate and committed you are to your PhD, to separate out yourself from your writing output so that you can hear criticism of it without it turning into the dark night of the soul. To consciously uncouple yourself.

This takes a real effort to separate out your feelings about what you are hearing about your work, from how you immediately react (why do you hate me /think I’m stupid etc) to what is being said. I won’t pretend that this is easy and almost every academic I know finds this one of the most difficult parts of being an academic. But the fact is, the critique is about a written piece of work, not your (ugly) baby, or you. 

TODAY I WILL…

  • Reflect on my feelings towards receiving feedback on my work;

  • Write down in my journal / ventilation file why I might have reacted in certain way to some feedback;

  • Can I talk to my supervisor about how they deliver their feedback;

  • Write for 2 hours minimum working my way down my list of tasks.