This past week, Professor Cynthia Hill talked to us about what to do with the feedback that we receive in our classes. What does it mean when the Professor marks ok on your paper? good? awk? We dove into what these terms might mean to each student. As we soon learned, much of the feedback we get back is about the writing style or grammar rather than the ideas within the assignments. Perhaps we received feedback for an awkward sentence structure, a small grammatical error, or diction choice that just doesn’t fit. Oftentimes, when we only receive feedback on the writing of our paper, we miss the opportunity to discuss and develop novel ideas. We also talked about how the use of rubrics can constrain creativity by coaxing the student to follow guidelines for the grade.

I found this to be a particularly insightful point about the feedback we so often receive as students. I immediately thought of what has worked for me with regard to the work I have produced at Cornell. During one of my classes, my Professor slowed down the writing process by making outlines and drafts due over the course of one month and having mandatory conferences. I never received a grade on my drafts, and she always returned them with a lot of feedback. Since the class was structured this way, a fantastic opportunity to discuss not only my own writing style, but also the ideas within my paper with my Professor. It was during these one-on-one conversations that I brought an interesting argument to fruition. I wonder if this structure could be helpful in focusing on ideas rather than grammar in other courses.