Receiving and incorporating feedback is something that is challenging for even the most seasoned of writers.

Feedback can often feel like someone is telling you that you aren't good enough, that your work or writing isn't valuable, and that perhaps you as a human aren't sufficient. That feeling is a lie! That is not what feedback is about. 

Feedback, when given in the spirit of constructive helpfulness, is about improvement. Your teachers, fellow students, and eventual coworkers and bosses, all want you to be your best self and produce your best work. They (hopefully) want to build you up, not tear you down. So let's talk about how to use feedback. To start with, the writing center at UNC has this helpful guide to getting, understanding, and effectively using feedback on your writing. 

So knowing that feedback isn't about being mean, and it IS about helping you reach full potential, what are some ways to make feedback work for you? 

• Realize that feedback (especially from your professor) is intended to be constructive and is being given in the spirit of helping you. It is NOT intended to be mean-spirited or hurtful. If you feel hurt, it's okay to set it aside for a time and come back to it later after you've had a little distance. 
• If you do not understand the feedback, ask questions. This is best done in person, but if you cannot make it to your professors office try asking if they're willing to set up a skype meeting or phone call. 
• Use those peer mentors! If the feedback you receive feels overwhelming, ask a friend to read your work, read the comments, and help you parse through what you really need to do. 
• Read the feedback even if you get a good grade. If you got a 100 on an assignment, you may not get much feedback. However, if you got an A-, you might be happy with that grade and be tempted not to bother with reading the comments. Don't do this. Looking at feedback even when you got a grade can help you see patterns of error so that you can adjust in the future. 
• Realize that you don't HAVE to make all of the suggested changes. Sometimes you'll get feedback that you disagree with, and that's okay too. 

It's nearing the end of the fall semester and many of you will be asked to fill out evaluations of your professors and their classes. Unfortunately, most of your professors can't (or won't) bribe you to do this. And in fact, there is bountiful evidence that student evaluations are poor measures of student learning and professor effectiveness. Nonetheless, it's important to most of your professors that you complete them since these evaluations are used in tenure and promotion decisions. Given that, I'd like to say a few words about them. 

First, please offer constructive comments! Here are two examples of what that might look like (taken from past course evaluations for my public policy course): 

• "The best aspect of this course would be learning about real-world policy and learning the process of policy. I would also say being able to choose that specific policy allowing you to choose something that you are passionate about." 
• "Some of the assignments were confusing even after reading the material. Since it is an online class it would be helpful to have an example portfolio available so that students can see what is expected." 

Notice that both those comments offer specific details about what is helpful about the course or could be improved upon about the course. Because of these comments, I continue to allow students in that course to choose a specific policy that they want to work on for the semester, and I added an example portfolio for students to look at as they create their own own work. 
 
On the other hand, vague comments are not very helpful. For example: 

• "I would change the grading policy" 

How? What would be better? This comment may be valid, it's possible my grading policies aren't fair somehow, but it was not useful, because it doesn't allow me to adjust or improve for the future. 
 
Second, try to consider the language you use and what biases might be at work. Ask yourself if you have fair and realistic expectations from your professors, or if there are some expectations may have been operating unconsciously and influencing your perceptions of the class. Try to write your evaluations based on the course itself, not based on your feelings about the professor's attitude or likability - doing this will also help ensure that you are writing constructive comments. 
 
Your professors care about what you think and how their courses worked for you. Above all else, they care that you learn. So please take these evaluations seriously! Tell your professors (in a constructive way) if there are ways that they can help you learn more effectively or make the course work better for you. And tell them what you liked, what they shouldn't change, and what you'd want to see again! 

Throughout the semester it is important for students to check in with themselves, mentally, emotionally, and physically. Take stock of how you're feeling across the board. Does your body feel run down and exhausted? Are you running on a high of stress and caffeine? 
Taking just 5 minutes to check in with your body can help you assess where you are and what you might need to adjust to make it through the remainder of the semester. Your university will almost certainly have a variety of resources that you can, and should, make use of. These resources range from academic assistance such as writing centers, to free counseling and mental health services, to affordable or free health clinics and vaccinations. But in addition to those services, there are a few minor things you can do right away to get back on track. 

​Are you struggling with racing thoughts?

• Take 1 minute to do a guided meditation. 
• Ask yourself where the majority of your stress is coming from, and what you can easily change or take control of. 

Does your to-do list feel endless and overwhelming? 

• Do a quick triage of your tasks by writing down every single thing on your to-do list, then ranking them in terms of deadline and importance. Tackle the most urgent ones first, and let go of some of the less important things where you can. 

Feeling generally unhealthy and off-kilter? 

• Try a brief social media detox. 
• Try to schedule in time for exercise. If a 30 minute run isn't in the cards, just do what you can. Exercise is not all-or-nothing. Fit in a few short walks by taking the long way to your next class or your car, or squeeze in a quick stretch break between homework assignments. Do these things WITHOUT your phone glued to your face. Just listen to the sounds around you, pay attention to your thoughts, and generally be a part of your surroundings. 

Are you maintaining healthy attitudes toward food? 

• During times of intense stress, food can easily become a crutch for comfort. Don't beat yourself up. Use Intuitive Eating strategies to honor your hunger, avoid diet culture, and retain a sense of body neutrality. 

Have you done something kind of someone else recently? 

• Engaging in small acts of kindness toward others can boost our own moods, self esteem, and happiness. In fact, kindness toward others can improve your life in a myriad of ways. 

Finally, did you remember that you are a whole and complete person who is worthy of love and kindness, just as you are? 

• Your worth is not determined by your grades or your achievements. You are doing a good job. 

This week, inspired by terrific work by Mirya Holman, I want to talk just a little bit about peer mentoring. Often when we think about mentors we think about older, wiser people who will guide us. But peer mentors are incredibly important for undergraduate and graduate students as well. You can be a mentor yourself, and find a mentor among people you already know. Perhaps it sounds silly to you to even talk about peer mentors when you're in college. Let me assure that it is not. 

So, why peer mentors? 

• Your fellow college students are going through exactly the same things you are. They share common experiences with you, and can give you advice or commiseration in real-time. 
• Your professors and advisors are likely already overburdened and may not be able to meet with you or respond to your emails as quickly as you would like. 
• It makes your college experience less lonely. 
• The college experience has changed drastically over the last 10-15 years, so your professors may not fully understand their student's lives. 
• It makes other people's lives less lonely / difficult. 
• No one person can be everything to everyone or know all the answers. Having multiple peer mentors can distribute the load, and give you the best support from the best people. 
• Peer mentoring builds community 
• It makes you a better person. 

So how can you help your fellow college students? What kinds of peer mentors should you find? Here are a few simple ways you can help other people, and things you can ask for help with yourself: 

• Feedback: You can provide feedback to other students on their research papers, essays, or task management / organization systems. 
• Hype: You can nominate your peers and friends for scholarships or awards. Amplify the people who deserve it! 
• Accountability: Help keep other people on track (and ask them to keep you on track as well). For example, I have a friend with whom I often text goals - we text each other our goals for the day, check in at lunch, then assess how we did at the end of the work day. 
• Check-in: Just check in on someone who might be having a hard time. Ask them how they're doing, show up with a coffee, and offer a listening ear. 
• "No, that shit is real": Confirm / support if someone has a terrible experience, gets talked down to, has a racist / sexist / homophobic experience, and especially if they're being gaslighted. 
• Hidden knowledge: In college there is often a "hidden curriculum." These are aspects of college like the norms, values, and expectations that are not explicitly stated, but which are required to succeed. Can you tell someone what is really going on? What they really need to know to succeed? Where to access tools and resources they might not know about? 
• "It happened to me too": Can you help someone feel less alone and like their experiences are valid? 
• Cheerleader: Can you reassure someone that they are doing a good job? Remind them that they can do hard things! 
• Reality check: Can you make sure someone is grounded and is doing what they need to do? 

If this post rings as true and important to you, then go find your people and get to work! 

For students who struggle to know when they are "done" with an assignment or paper, having a final checklist can be helpful. If you are one of these students, here are a few minor things you can do to make sure you're getting full credit on class essays /papers and that you are producing your best work. Below, I present to you a pre-submission check list. If you do all of these things before submitting an assignment, you should be setting yourself up for success.  

Pre-Submission Checklist: 

Substance 
[] Did I utilize all required class materials? If I was still not confident about the subject, did I use any supplementary materials provided? 
[] Did I actually clearly address all questions asked in the prompt?
[] Did I understand the purpose of the writing assignment and write something insightful and interesting in response? Would I want to read my own work? 
[] Does my paper flow in a logical and organized manner? 

Sources: 
[] Did I appropriately cite (in-text) class resources in my response? 
[] If I used outside sources: were they appropriate academic sources, and did I appropriately cite them (both in-text and works cited)? 
[] Did I make any unfounded claims without backing them up? If so, consider removing the claim or looking for evidence. 

Proofreading: 
[] Have I checked my grammar, spelling, and punctuation?
[] Check for consistency. For example, am I using the same tense (present / past) throughout? 
[] Is my writing concise? Remove unnecessary words meant to impress people or lengthen my word count (these don't fool the professor). 
[] Did I remember to include the word count or page numbers, if required? 
[] Did I put my name, and any other required heading information, on this assignment

For Online Discussion:
[] If this is a discussion board posting, was my response to a fellow classmate kind, clear, and a good-faith response to their posting? 
[] Did I engage my classmates in a way that I would want to be engaged with? 

For a research paper:
[] Do I clearly state the purpose of the paper? Do I explicitly state the motivating research question? 
[] Do I provide a roadmap of what is to come in the paper? 
[] Do I have at least one sentence that explains why anyone cares about this research? 
[] Have I engaged with the research on the subject? (In other words, I read a variety of research, understand it, and know where I fit in to it). 
[] Did I clearly explain how I conducted my research? 
[] Do I summarize main points for the reader?
[] Does my conclusion clearly state what I set out to do and what I found? 

Often undergraduate (and graduate) students struggle to read academic work, and even textbooks, effectively. Reading academic work is a skill, and it differs drastically from reading for pleasure. Here, I offer you advice on how to effectively and efficiently read for class. 

When reading an academic journal article, begin by identifying the research question and the main argument (thesis) of the article. This is the most important part of reading: understanding the main argument. You should be able to distill the main argument of an article in to two to three sentences that clearly capture the findings and significance of that work. Once you have identified the question and thesis, you can begin to discover how the author makes their case.

• When reading an academic article, you'll typically want to begin by identifying the dependent variable and the independent variable. In case you're not familiar with those terms, let me summarize them for you. An independent variable is a thing that you believe changes (happens) independently, on its own. For instance, an independent variable might be a person's age. A dependent variable is the thing that the researcher believes changes in response to other variables, and which he or she is trying to measure. For example: if the research question is "how much does lobbying matter for policy making in the age of mass emails?" then the independent variable is mass email (as it is used in lobbying), and the dependent variable is legislator responsiveness to lobbying. 
• One of the main tools in academic writing is "they say, I say." Identify the author's "I say," and "they say." How is the author setting up their argument in opposition or as an addition to a body of knowledge? What is novel about what you're reading? 
• What data are they using to answer their research question? Is the data appropriate to the question? If the author wants to talk about women on city councils, then they need to have data that addresses that level of government. 
• How are the variables "operationalized"? What do I mean by that? Essentially, consider how they measure various concepts. In the above example of lobbying during the age of mass emails, you would want to know - how does the author capture "responsiveness" to emails? 
• Finally, what conclusions does the author (authors) come to? Did you find their evidence convincing, or were their conclusions a bit of a leap? 
• Finally, here is a list of questions you can use to structure your reading of an academic journal article. 

In an ideal world, you will go through each of those steps to deconstruct an article and analyze what you're reading. But we all know that you may be reading under time pressures or constraints, and you may not realistically be able to sit down and deconstruct every article you are assigned. What then? 

You'll still need to begin by identifying the thesis of the article, but instead of mapping out the argumentation, variables, and methods, you can use heuristics to grasp the basic point of the article. Here is a great resource on how to best use heuristics and keywords to improve comprehension when doing quick reading. A few additional pointers are as follows: 

• The most important thing to do is still (likely) to grasp the basic research question and the thesis / findings. 
• However, you should bear in mind the type of class you are reading for. If you are reading for a research methods class, by the love of all that is holy, do not skim through the research methods section. 

Ultimately, if you have to take shortcuts, consider what the purpose of the reading is - are you doing this as part of constructing a literature review? Is it an assignment for a research methods class? Are you using it as a model for writing style? There are many different reasons to read academic work. Allow your reading approach to be guided by your particular needs. 

Let's break down the research process a little. For college classes, and even for future jobs, you may be required to do research from time to time. While it's tempting to go straight to wikipedia, and that's a fine starting place, it's not a good ending place. In fact, you should NEVER cite wikipedia in an academic paper. So what should you do? How do you start to write a paper on a topic you know very little to nothing about? 

1. Start by googling the topic. It's fine to use wikipedia to begin with, just don't stop there. Read a few news articles from reputable sources. Look for .gov pages when you're doing policy research. Indeed, the U.S. Government is unique in the fact that the most detailed and reputable information on government, comes from the government itself (usually from government agencies or bureaucracies). 
2. Once you feel that you have a very basic understanding, move on to more academic sources. Google Scholar can be a great place to find academic literature on subject areas you're interested in. Your university library will also have a variety of resources, and the librarians can help you figure out where to start if you're feeling stumped on a particular topic. I know it sounds old fashioned, but reading even a few chapters from an actual book can do wonders (you don't even necessarily have to read the entire book, try starting with the intro and conclusion!). 
3. Once you find a few books or articles on your topic, you're set, you can begin to step into the academic "conversation." Go to the references section of the article or book you like, and skim through their citations. You'll suddenly have an enormous list of potential sources of information - other articles and books on the subject, all of which have their own citations that will lead your further into the subject. As you do this you'll likely begin to see patterns emerge. Writers are talking to each other, engaging with each others work, and responding to each others ideas.
4. As you're doing all this reading, take notes. You can use a word document, an excel spread sheet, or a notebook. But be sure you make note of the sources so you can properly cite them later. Personally, I like to create an excel workbook. I make a column for the article title, for the author, for the date written (and date accessed if a website), a column for a link if using a website, and a column for a 3-4 sentence summary. 

Once you feel like you've done enough background research and are ready to start writing, then it's time to get serious. Why does it matter if you write a good paper anyway? Because, there is a growing consensus that strong writing skills are necessary to succeed in the workplace. The reality is, I can't teach you how to write a strong paper in this blog post. But your university almost certainly has lots of resources to help you develop your writing skills, perhaps even a writing center. However, I will give you a few tips for getting started. 

1. The worst part of starting a new paper is staring at that blank page in front of you. So don't jump right in to trying to write a paper. Start with an outline. This can be extremely broad. 
2. Map out the sections of the paper: introduction, theory, evidence, analysis, and conclusions. Make a few bullet points under each section, and write one or two sentences about what you want to cover in those sections. 
3. Begin filling in more details, you can use bullet points for this still. Map out the argument you're trying to make or research you want to cite. 
4. Once you have your ideas down on paper, you can begin to fill in the sentences and turn your work into a real paper. And don't forget to delete all the bullet points before you turn in your paper. Which brings us to... 
5. Editing! The final step of any paper is editing. Have you read through your paper from start to finish to look for typos, grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and so on? If this is hard for you consider changing the font to 18 point, changing the color of the font, or reading the paper out loud (remember to change everything back again before submitting). Doing these things can help your brain notice mistakes it may have overlooked before. 

Our mantra for this post: a goal without a plan is just a wish. What is your plan for this week? 

1. Begin by mapping out major milestones, goals, and deadlines for the semester.

2. Look at your calendar for the week and month and identify those major deadlines and goals you set for yourself. 

3. Fill in your guideposts - when do you have classes? If you have a job, when will you be at work? When will you workout, rest, or relax? Allow yourself to have a work/life balance. 

4. What are your MUST DOs for the week and what do you need to work on to move toward other goals? What are the things you'd like to do, if you have time? 

5. Start with your MUST DO tasks. Do the hardest and most important things during the times of day when you are at your best and most focused. 

6. Every day this week look at the calendar you made and stick to it. Reach those goals. Do the studying, write the papers, apply for that job or grad school or internship or sign up for that GRE. Whatever it is that you need to do to make it happen.  
​
7. Celebrate your achievements! 

In my previous blog post, I told you to work when you work and rest when you rest. But how can you best follow that advice? 

• Make a schedule for yourself and stick to it. Schedule important assignments including writing papers or studying for exams at your best times of day. If you focus well in the morning, then do important work then, and push the more annoying and busy-work tasks for later in the day when you're burned out or feeling distracted. 
• Force yourself to focus when it's time to work by eliminating other distractions. Turn off push notifications to your phone, lock it in a desk drawer, or put it on silent in the other room. 
• Consider installing an app like Rescuetime on your phone or internet browser, which will allow you to recognize your productive and distracting activities. 
• If you struggle with getting distracted on your computer, especially on the internet, install Chrome Nanny or Get Focused to limit your time on distracting websites. 
• Make use of productivity strategies. You can use a Pomodoro timer to focus (actually, any timer will do, as long as it isn't on your cell phone). Read about the Pomodoro Technique here. 
• You can also use the Forest app to grow trees while you work. 
• Schedule 20-30 minutes of productive time first thing when you start working, before you check your email, twitter, or other social media. Doing this means that you KNOW you'll get at least something done every day. 

All of these tips are intended to help you work when you work. When you aren't working, then take a real break and let yourself relax. 

As the semester starts, we can really weigh ourselves down with expectations without having a clear way to meet those expectations. Setting clear goals and engaging in proactive academic planning can make the difference between getting where you want to go, and barely keeping your head above water. Below are a few simple ways to get your semester off to an organized start and make sure you are keeping on top of your deadlines. Some of this advice is modified from Mirya Holman's academic mentorship newsletter, and other advice is based on my own experience. 

1. Look at your whole semester. When are the major due dates and exams for each class? What other major plans do you have? Are there any times when you know you won't be working? When will you be traveling? Seeing family or friends? Mark major deadlines on your calendar or an everything notebook. Block out times when you have outside plans. Knowing what your major deadlines are, and getting ahead of them, will allow you to put work away and fully enjoy those times when you want to spend time with friends or family. 

2. Figure out exactly what you HAVE TO get done by the end of the semester. Maybe you have a semester long project or you need to finish a resume or apply for law school. 

3. Make a plan to get THOSE THINGS done. You will be very unhappy if you get bogged down in day to day assignments and let major things go untouched until the last minute. Break major projects and goals down in to pieces. What order do you need to do those pieces in? Make a deadline for each piece and put those deadlines on your calendar, paying attention to other deadlines that you have to meet. You can do this in a calendar, or on a spread sheet, or both. 

4. Set rewards for yourself when you get important projects done or meet major deadlines. This might be something as small as a bowl of ice cream, but it helps to have something to look forward to. 

5. Every single Sunday, look at those deadlines. What do you need to get done this week? How will you get it done? I organize my entire work week in advance (at least loosely). 

As you begin the semester, it's important to keep your eyes on the prize and remember what your ultimate goals are for being where you are. Work advice aside, you also need to take care of yourself. Time without boundaries leads to less productive work in the long run. Don't be a "work martyr" at school or at work. Sleep deprivation affects your productivity and health. Anything less than 7 hours of sleep will affect your ability to concentrate and learn.  Work when you work, and rest when you rest. Don't allow work and work stress to rule every waking moment. The way to avoid that is to be completely focused during work time, and put work completely away during rest / play time. More on how to do that soon.