In this blog Beth Price shares her advice for dealing with critical feedback on your work, and keeping your self-motivation and self-confidence up in the face of negative comments. 

Some people have stress-inducing nightmares about sitting in exam halls, some people’s nightmares find them naked and afraid at a podium in front of a packed auditorium. Not me. My nightmares revolve around Reviewer 2. 

It’s always Reviewer 2 for some reason. The anonymous duo of peer reviewers are the ultimate academic good cop / bad cop, and it falls on Reviewer 2 to be the bearer of bad news. “Accept only with significant revisions”, “poorly laid out argument”, “does not engage well”. I have yet to be told that an article would be better if I was actually a different author entirely, who just so happened to be co-author on the very paper being reviewed; that anecdote belongs to my friend. 

Whether it’s the devastating words from your supervisor, “this would be a good side argument to explore”, when you present them with three months’ hard work on your central argument, or a rejection of an article you worked really hard on, (often correct) critical feedback can cut really deep, and even derail our confidence. With feedback being a fundamental part of the PhD experience, how can we avoid taking it all to heart?

Set Aside Time 

If you’re anything like me, when your email notification pings, whether that’s on your phone or your computer, you *have* to check. And when you see the subject “Re Your Chapter” or “Feedback From That Super Competitive Journal”, you *have* to click on it immediately. And then you see endless red ink and critical comments, and suddenly brunch is ruined. 

Rather than reading feedback immediately and fixating on it until you can sit down and fix everything, try to resist the temptation to peek. Instead, set aside one block of time to read through it all and then a second block of time to start fixing it. Deadlines can be tight, but not so tight that you have to drop everything until your work is perfect. I find that I can be more objective about the feedback and actually take the points on board when I have prepared myself to read it and when it isn’t a surprise, nasty or otherwise.

I also wholeheartedly recommend reading through the comments separately to trying to deal with them. Taking 15 or 20 minutes to read through without immediately starting to fix them means that, if they are genuinely upsetting, I have time to decompress and get some perspective. Personally, I take everything to heart (including feedback on this blog so please don’t get in touch with any critiques) and have learned over the years that I need to respond emotionally before I can respond practically. Trying to sit at my desk and work on the comments which make me want to cry is not a recipe for success, but reading comments and then promptly going for a walk helps me approach them much more rationally. Having time to mull and/or time to get righteously annoyed that Reviewer 2 totally missed the point is an important second step in responding to critical feedback. 

Keep Some Perspective

Perspective means different things for different people when it comes to feedback. Obviously, feedback from your supervisor telling you to rethink a core part of your PhD is substantial, but feedback from one reviewer isn’t the be all and end all. Even having a paper outright rejected from a journal you were really hoping for isn’t insurmountable. There will always be other journals to submit to, more tweaks to make to your paper, and more opportunities to share your research. 

Getting other people’s perspective can also help in the face of seriously critical feedback. Crying over comments on your own can feel catastrophic, but sitting with friends and colleagues who’ve been through the same process and who have your back can be a huge help. Like it or not, rejection and negative feedback is part of the academic journey, and it can really ease the sting to hear that your supervisor or an academic you admire had the exact same crisis of faith when they got their first (or fiftieth) rejection. 

The other thing to remember is that you are actually an expert, or at least well on the way to becoming one. As scary as it can feel at times, the further through your PhD you are, the more correct you are likely to be. Sometimes reviewers get it completely wrong, and sometimes you have to fight your corner. In my niche of Chinese media and art history, I’ve had feedback from specialists in Western media and art that wildly missed the mark hand in hand with positive feedback from East Asian specialists. Trusting yourself and knowing that you do know what you’re on about is key to not feeling like a failure when someone disagrees with you. 

Remember, Your PhD Isn’t Everything

Finally, and most importantly, you are more than just a PhD student. It’s difficult to not get caught up in creeping hours and feel like every waking moment needs to be devoted to researching and writing (see last week’s blog for more on the challenges of a work/life balance). The stakes are high when it comes to nailing your thesis or getting that byline in a high-ranking journal, and it would be wrong to pretend otherwise. But I promise that your PhD is not everything.

Plenty of philosophers and writers have lovely pithy quotes attributed to them about the intrinsic value of knowledge, but my favourite comes, paraphrased, from Plutarch:

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.”

Plutarch, “On Listening To Lectures“

In other words, the spark that has led us to want to spend 3 – 7 years of our lives becoming an expert on an unfathomably niche topic is actually the point. Feedback and learning from our mistakes is a compulsory part of building up the fire of our knowledge, but it is not the point. When the critical feedback is too critical and we have a serious wobble about whether we can even do this, remembering the spark that started us on our journey can really help bring us back to what matters.

---