Professors not giving any feedback?

[anabeldm9]

I posted earlier the topic Bombing my first Paper and recieved really wonderful and helpful responses. Someone in that thread asked me what I received on the paper, and that made me think about asking this new question: Is it normal for professors to not hand back a single thing they have graded?

 

In this course, I received an overall grade of A--> the highest possible. But I wrote three papers (the only class assignments) and did not receive a single paper back. Other students have told me they do not think this professor reads the papers and they seem totally fine with it! And I haven't asked him yet for my papers back. I'm afraid of what he will say. When he doesn't want to answer or respond, he pretends not to hear or understand the question.

 

The only feeback I got was his oral responses to my oral summaries of my papers (essentially, a 15-minute chat), the first of which seemed like it went horribly wrong for me. This professor is brilliant and I genuinely learn a lot from his courses, but his attitude infuriates me when I see how hard other professors are working while he does next to nothing.

 

Advice? Similar experiences? Am I crazy? Don't answer that last one. Thanks for reading, folks.

[mandarin.orange]

Is it normal for professors to not hand back a single thing they have graded?

 

I didn't get a single paper back from any of my grad coursework, so par for the course, at least in my program. I had brief chats or compliments after the term in maybe two cases, but other than that, I felt these things were submitted into a void.

 

Then at some point during my quals, I began to wonder if my committee was even reading anything, ever, or if these were just onerous checkpoints for the degree program. So a labmate / friend and I conspired to put "Easter eggs" in our lit reviews. She copied Angry Bird cartoons onto some charts and figures, I had a 1-paragraph tangent about my search for Bigfoot during fieldwork. Neither were ever mentioned to us. 

Edited January 19, 2015 by mandarin.orange

[anabeldm9]

Wow! Well it's comforting to know I'm not alone, mandarin.orange. But didn't you find it frustrating? Or were you just so focused on your research and the parts that felt validating that it didn't bother you? 

 

That's pretty hilarious how you and your friend handled it. 

[fuzzylogician]

It depended on the professor in my case. Some gave back detailed comments and would encourage me to meet with them to develop the paper into a conference presentation and (eventually, way down the line) journal submission. Others never returned any papers and it was fairly obvious they didn't read them. Or they would say "contact me if you would like to get feedback" and most of us never would. Funnily enough, I ended up pursuing more of the papers I wrote for these enthusiastic professors than the ones I wrote for the other ones, but that doesn't mean that none of the other ones were interesting. It's just easier to work on something that someone thinks is exciting and (at least early on) it's hard to know what's good if no one tells you. 

 

I do know for sure that my committee read each one of my dissertation chapters. I got detailed comments on specifics that made it clear that they had done their job. However, I think this is very different from reading final class projects. Lets be honest, most of those final papers are really just things you write because you have to, that aren't that great and you're never going to pursue. It'll be a waste of everyone's time to give you detailed comments on something that you wrote last minute and never proof-read, and that you're going to completely forget about a few days after class is over. I can totally see why some professors don't give detailed comments unless specifically asked. (As an instructor, it's very frustrating to give students detailed comments that I know they are going to ignore; I still do it because I hope at least some of the students benefit from my comments and I try and recall my personal experience with not knowing what's good and what's not, but I can't tell you it's not just a little bit upsetting.) 

[St Andrews Lynx]

Graduate-level courses are often less about actually teaching you new things, and more about making sure that everyone in the program has a satisfactory understanding of the field and to fill in any missing gaps from your undergrad education. 

 

Because of that, I think that feedback can be a lot lighter in grad courses, and the professors might be more lenient about giving good grades. 

 

Honestly, I wouldn't sweat it. You're here in grad school to do research, rather than ace classes. If the professors think you know what you're doing (and the fact that they gave you an A suggests that they do!), then just chill. You can maybe ask for general feedback "After reading my essays, do you think there is anything I should look out for when I'm writing my dissertation/paper/proposal?", but I wouldn't expect a lot from this type of prof.  

[anabeldm9]

Well, that really puts it in perspective. Thanks everyone for the thoughtful responses.

 

I guess I expected more from feedback in a social science program, but I can see the point that it would be sort of time-consuming to give lots of feedback on these early papers. He seems to be a slouch in comparison to my other professors who regularly meet with us to discuss our papers and then give us lots of comments. But he is older and has been around the longest, so that probably explains it. 

[rising_star]

It's definitely partially because it's time-consuming. My experience was that I got more feedback from profs if I made it clear that I was planning to build on or develop that class paper into something else. So, for example, I wrote research proposals for final papers on multiple occasions and I'd always make sure to get the professor's feedback on those. They usually provided it in writing, though sometimes I had to meet with them and get the feedback orally. If you take the initiative to ask for feedback because you want to do something with the document later, people tend to respond well.

 

As a fellow social sciences person, I would urge you not to write any "throwaway" papers. Basically everything I wrote in grad school for a final paper served me in some way. I wrote sample comp answers, research proposals, book reviews, conference papers, and draft chapters for my courses. Our professors encouraged us to do so, in part because they knew we needed to be doing all of those other things anyway. I'd encourage you to do the same. Good luck!

[wildviolet]

I had a professor who gave feedback in the form of two or three sentences... for the entire paper. I've also not received papers back, especially at the end of the term. I've never asked for the paper back (and, I got a 4.0 in that class).

 

Like rising_star, most of my professors encourage us to use course papers for other program requirements, such as funding proposals, practicum projects, and comprehensive exams.

[TakeruK]

From the sciences point of view, I would also agree that there is no "throwaway" papers either. All of my core classes are fair game in qualifying exams and even though my quals are research based, we were advised to use the final projects/papers as a way to prepare for the exam. In addition, it would be a good idea to either choose 1) projects related to your research (i.e. topics on the quals exams) or 2) choose projects related to one another across all of your classes. Depending on the circumstances, it might be more beneficial to you to not follow the course project directions exactly and just do what's best for you. That is, having the extra knowledge for your quals, or having a project lead to a paper, might be better in the long run than getting an A instead of B+ etc.

 

That said, I do think that professors should give more feedback, even at the graduate level. I think it's a sign of mutual respect for each other -- I'm not going to write crap that will waste their time and they are going to make sure I get something useful from them out of the process. In my experience, I've always had decent feedback. I'm not expecting detailed comments like suggestions on how to word my sentences more clearly but just small things like "this is a good idea but flawed because xyz". In a lot of my classes, we actually get peer feedback, which is great, in my opinion. The prof sets it up so that each student reads 3 or 4 other students' work and provides strong/weak points. I think this was a great learning experience for me as well, to see how other people write things. And, finally, this is especially helpful when our final projects are things we would actually need to do later in life (i.e. writing mock grant proposal, preparing oral or poster presentations etc.)

[fuzzylogician]

As a fellow social sciences person, I would urge you not to write any "throwaway" papers. Basically everything I wrote in grad school for a final paper served me in some way. I wrote sample comp answers, research proposals, book reviews, conference papers, and draft chapters for my courses. Our professors encouraged us to do so, in part because they knew we needed to be doing all of those other things anyway. I'd encourage you to do the same. Good luck!

 

I agree with the advice to make the most use of your papers, and use them to fulfill other program requirements as much as you can. However, I don't think it's that bad to have some courses, mostly required ones that are out of your field, where you just write something not great because you have to and you're not really ever going to follow up on it. I also think it's important not to impose requirements on your paper that aren't part of the assignment. Yes, use your paper as the basis for a grant proposal or comp paper, but don't write your paper *as* that proposal or comp paper. I sometimes see people try and make their class papers super polished, beyond what's required, and this ambition/perfectionism ends up slowing them down. Get the class requirements out of the way, keeping in mind how you might be able to build on what you're doing later, but get to work on that bigger project only after you've completed the official class requirement. This is generally my approach to grad school requirements: do what you need to in order to get the requirements out of the way, continue working on a project as you wish after doing that. Things like comps, prospectus, and even dissertation defense are internal exams you just need to pass. You can work on those projects to get publishable papers you're proud of later, but I wouldn't wait to have an accepted journal paper if my program says I can defend the first draft of a manuscript as a comprehensive paper (for example). I'd defend, then work on my paper without the added pressure of the formal exam.  

[rising_star]

fuzzy, there might be some confusion. I'm not saying to wait on getting something published or not submit a final paper unless it's a publishable manuscript. I'm saying to think of final papers as first drafts of manuscripts that you can build on in the future. And, at least in my program, that was expected and encouraged. We were also encouraged to submit things like NSF proposal drafts as final papers, especially for fall courses since there's a spring DDRI deadline. Having a solid draft in December and getting feedback in early January gave you another month to revise before you had to submit.YMMV, obviously, but that was a pretty standard approach in both my MA and my PhD programs.

[shadowclaw]

I have definitely experienced a mixture of feedback levels from professors. For one professor that I took two courses with, we had to write research proposals as part of the requirement. Both were evolution courses, so I wasn't really able to reuse the work for my research or anything, but I did make one of them loosely related to my thesis so that I would be at educating myself about something related to my project. I got a grade but zero feedback on both of these papers. I received full points on them, but I'm sure there were improvements that could had been suggested.

In another course that was field-oriented, we did two lab papers plus a manuscript for a research project. For the lab papers (which were glorified lab reports), I got a comment or two. For the manuscript, no feedback.

For one class, I actually got great feedback. We wrote literature reviews related to our thesis work, and ended up doing a proposal, annotated bibliography, and finally the paper. I received plenty of feedback on the proposal and final paper. However, I think the professor may have regretted having 18 people write literature reviews with a two week window to grade them.

I do agree that the level of feedback may have to do with how the professor perceives that you will use the comments. For those first two papers I mentioned, I'm sure the professor was aware that for most people, they were indeed throw away papers. In contrast, the professor who assigned the literature reviews encouraged us to create publishable material, so we were more likely to actually read and use her comments.

As an undergrad, I read and commented on a lot of papers, and there was one that really made me angry. It was an animal physiology class, and we had to peer review a classmate's paper. I spent over an hour and a half writing all kinds of comments (both on grammar and content - it was a very rough draft), and the girl didn't show up to class the week we had to hand them back. When she finally did come to class, she ran out afterwards and I had to chase her down to give it to her. I doubt she even read it and it really aggravated me.

[The Wayfarer]

This varies greatly in my department; most of the time not receiving any feedback means you're on the right track. (If you're going off the rails someone will pull you aside.) That being said, if I met with professors during office hours or individual meetings they would give me feedback -- but more along the lines of "You should submit this to a conference."

 

One professor in my department gave great feedback; but they seem to be the exception and not the rule. (They're also relatively new to the department so it may be a culture thing.)

 

All and all though my department tends to follow the mantra of "no news is good news."