Dealing With Criticism In Writing: A Writing Consultant's Perspective

It is not uncommon to consult with writers who have been criticized about their writing. In fact, most writers who have been in a university/professional environment (including yours truly) have faced this from their bosses, albeit in different magnitudes. I have shared my office space with colleagues, who despite being proficient in the spoken language (native English language speakers) have often been told to seek help with their writing. They do not take this well at all, especially if the criticism comes from a non-native speaker. And it's not uncommon even for teachers to simply shunt their students off to the writing studio to 'fix their writing' (let's prepare more of that magic potion!).

I am penning this down fresh from consulting with Ms. E who had received a severe dressing down on her final term paper. E came in during my compression session in the evening and sat there, almost blank-faced. Upon asking her what she wanted to discuss during our 25 minutes (she had circled on 'Research Strategies' in the intake form), she pulled up the review comments from her professor. As I was reading through the comments (15 comments on a 3-page paper, the last of which was half a page long summarizing the professor's views), my very first instinct was to side with the writer. All the signs contended to my initial hypothesis - that even if the teacher was well within her right to do such a detailed dissection, she could have been a bit more polite in the way the views were conveyed to E. 

The crux of the teacher's comments seemed to have stemmed from the frustration of seeing a student who had decided to not cite any of her findings. So it seemed that all this information that E was putting in her term paper was indeed hers, which was not true. On top of this, it had come to the teacher's attention that E completely missed the point about focusing her paper around her thesis statement. On further investigation, the thesis statement seemed pretty disorganized and broken as well. Since this was a 3000 level course, the teacher did manage to vent out her frustrations coupled with a few personal remarks (I will fail you on the grounds of plagiarism if you don't make amends!), and it was evident that E had been adversely affected by it. And with 5 hours to go before the submission deadline, this was great news! Except that it was not. 

I started the session not knowing how this would end. I knew for sure that there was no magic formula to fix her issues. But it was also important to not bog E down further. Even though we as writing consultants would not lose sleep over such kinds of situations we encounter at work, it was important to not pull the writer down further into the abyss. I gave E my unbiased view of what I felt after reading through the comments, and only sided with her regarding the tone of her teacher. It was important to let E understand that the teacher was well within her right to critique the writing and provide some feedback (though E seemed to think the teacher was 'ridiculous', per usual). The tone used may have been purely borne out of the frustration of the task at hand and the only thing E could do at this point was to move on with the assignment rather than building up a siege mentality.

I then spoke to her on the need for citations and how it was paramount that she had to address these significant aspects in her writing in order to improve her grades. E seemed to have taken my suggestions well. Perhaps an unbiased view from a second person was all that she needed.

-- Nikhil Menon, Ph.D. Student in Civil and Environmental Engineering