Professional development and career

We all make mistakes, and it’s never easy to admit when you’re wrong. The important thing is to be honest with ourselves about the mistakes we have made, and to work on improving.  

No matter what the experience is: performing poorly in a presentation or missing an important deadline  – if you are curious about the what, why and how of the experience you can learn from it and use more effective strategies next time you are in a similar situation.  

Things to ask yourself: 

• What led to the mistake? 

• How will you know if the same thing is happening again? 

• What will you change for next time? 

To learn from your mistakes may require you to work towards a growth mindset. Growth mindset is where you believe that applying effort and effective strategies will improve your skills. This is opposed to a fixed mindset, where a person might believe that their innate ability determines what they are able to achieve.

Believing that the work you put in will determine your success makes you more likely to persist after setbacks, embrace new challenges and see failure as an opportunity to grow and learn.

Receiving feedback on your work is an unavoidable part of going to uni and a key part of how we learn. But it can also be intimidating, sometimes disappointing and you might even feel hurt - especially when you’ve put your heart into it but still haven’t done as well as you thought you would. 

Use these tips to get in the right head space to take on feedback and make the most of the opportunity to learn. 

Getting in the zone 

Perspective is great but it’s often the first thing to go when we feel overwhelmed. Before you even look at your mark and comments try taking a moment to consider the big picture and remind yourself: 

1. you’re a student, 

2. you are here to learn and still learning, 

3. It’s just Uni and you have other things happening in your life! 

In the end, you’re just a being on a planet in a huge universe! 

Getting feedback 

Whether you are receiving feedback face to face or reading it, it is common to have a strong emotional response. Being able to get past this initial response will make it easier to understand, analyse and make sense of the feedback. 

• Written - If the feedback is written it might be good to let it sit for a little while and come back when things feel a bit calmer.  

• Face to face - If you are receiving feedback in a dialogue it can be a real challenge to manage your response so that you can engage. Take a breath, remember the three points of perspective and try to listen and ask questions. 

It's OK, this is a hard skill for anyone to learn. This will get easier with practice but if you can adopt the attitude “I want feedback because I want to improve” you are on the right track. 

The Feedback Donut 

You have gotten in the zone, received your feedback and now you are ready to tackle the feedback beast. As you probably still want to make the most of your opportunity to learn at uni, at this stage the assignment has already been handed in, it's already been marked. But the big question is: 

What can you do to hear, understand and use the feedback in the next assignment?