On Help and Feedback
Receiving help is hard, but I’ve made it way harder for myself.
What is this pretty email??
What is this special email you’re receiving? Who is Substack? How did I subscribe to this?
These are my typical updates, but under a private Substack. I hope this platform will help me keep track of these updates, add people to the list, and let you look back on them easily.
As promised last week, this email is more of an essay of my thoughts. By “essay” I mean: relatively stream of consciousness, minimal editing, with a focus on improving my writing and thinking processes.
On Help and Feedback
Sitting in my computer science thesis class this week, I got anxious. I felt an urgent need to be honest with myself. After presenting my plans for research, the one other student in the class was giving me feedback. Since it’s only two students in the class, including me, it’s a pretty relaxed space; however, I had a hard time listening to their feedback. I’ve known the student for a while, but have always been egotistical when it comes to comparison. This time I caught this mindset and felt pretty pained by it.
For a long time, I have found it really hard to accept and receive feedback. In high school, my soccer coach said I was good but “un-coachable.” I didn’t even take that constructively. Alas, I’ve rarely listened to feedback, always finding excuses about how the other person must have a skewed perspective.
Receiving help is hard, but I’ve made it way harder for myself.
Building yourself up so high only makes you more afraid to come down. Afraid of falling, you limit the risks you take. And risk make growth. Conversely, if you know you are starting from the bottom, you aren’t worried about messing up. You can laugh and have a good time making fun of yourself, knowing that you have a long way to go and that you have barely started. If I started learning the trumpet tomorrow, I am sure my noises would serve as quite sufficient comedic relief.
It’s not always an ego thing. Hearing advice is harder when you have spent hours of dedicated time working on something. Over time, you have built up confidence in your abilities and outputs. People seem to offer to help most when they notice someone struggling. Because of this, it has always felt to me that the person giving me advice is making the judgement that I have not put in the work. That is the most frustrating.
For example, I’ve found it really hard to receive help and advice about the job process. I spend the majority of my thinking cycles contemplating my career and aspirations. I am persistently networking, cold-emailing, and exploring new companies. Still, by nature of looking to work at a very small company, I don’t have a post-grad job yet. I am not worried, but when my truly kind, well meaning friends offer advice, I feel attacked.
The same worry lives in the Computer Science building. I find it easy to admit out loud that I am not the best, it’s harmless. Yet, behind that public facade, I have carefully constructed this mental imagery of myself as a computer science whiz—as the best, at least at Middlebury. It’s dangerous, scary, and embarrassing to admit, but it’s a start to fixing it. Since my year off, I have spent the large portion of my time working on my development skills and practicing. I am worried of the failure that I have not progressed as much as I should have.
Each piece of feedback I take and learn from feels like wiping the steam off the mirror.
My identity is largely composed of this talent and practice. Each piece of feedback I take and learn from feels like wiping the steam off the mirror. As I hear advice, I learn of just how much I can grow and how far I have to go. Contradicting with the majority of my identity, coming to terms with the need for improvement knock me off kilter. I feel less.
Writing this is a positive first step to admitting my flaws and working towards improving them. I’ve been able to feel small improvements in my classes the past week. Through being mindful and self-aware, I am more apt to recognize when my ego build it’s defenses.
Thank you for reading! Please let me know what you think of the new format. See you all next week for a life update :)
This format is super cool! In regards to your article, sometimes I find receiving feedback to be difficult as well; it is certainly a skill I need to practice. However, it is important to remember that GIVING feedback is a skill as well, and not everyone is good at it. Give yourself some grace because some of the feedback you may have received in the past was probably not constructive or presented in a helpful manner. It takes meeting in the middle with your critic to review how you prefer to take feedback and what they can do to present their feedback in that style. Something that helps me when receiving feedback is reminding myself that the critique is of my work, not of me, which helps me to think about the feedback more clearly.