How to avoid taking advisor's criticism personally

[serenade]

Hi all, 

(Before beginning, I should say that I understand the following: Academia is a world of criticism, it's part of the lifestyle, and one won't last long in their career if they can't take criticism. I really do understand that and have generally learned to handle criticism, but lately I've been having a particular problem that I'm trying to work through). 

My relationship with my advisor is both professional and personal. By personal, all I mean is that I feel like he cares about me as a human being - not just as a scholar, is a mentor, and that we sometimes talk about things that don't just involve academics. But that's what makes receiving criticism so difficult, I think. Especially when that criticism is about whether or not he thinks I will pass my comp exams and dissertation proposal and continue on in the program. 

He has told me that he feels unsure about my ability to pass both of those things, and that he honestly doesn't know if I am someone who will continue to completion or be forced to leave this semester. I understand that he is just being honest and doing his job. I wouldn't expect any less, of course. But it is really difficult when someone you respect so much and who you have some type of relationship with as a person tells you those things (or any criticism, really). When I hear him say things like, "I really don't know if you'll progress through the program" what my brain hears is "I'm not really excited about the thought of you being around for several more years." That can be devastating. It's hard for me not to interpret things personally (though I understand this is a problem). 

While I do think every advising relationship should be primarily a professional one, at the same time I also don't think the answer is to avoid any personal interaction in order for students not to take criticism personally, since there is so much to be gained from the interpersonal relationships that can develop between advisor and advisee. But I guess I'm wondering if other people have this problem and how they've taken steps to deal with it? 

[Hope.for.the.best]

I can totally relate to you, even though I don't develop that sort of personal relationships with my advisors. I am not very good at academic writing and even though I tried learning how papers in top journal are written, I still cannot get to that level. All my advisors encourage me to keep trying, but one of my advisors says she is not convinced that I used other papers as a guide in my writing. It is very hurtful that she dismisses my hard work at all! One thing my psychologist (a PhD graduate herself) advises is to think about the good things that your advisor has done to you, e.g. he not just cares about your academic life, but also other aspects in your life. It is natural that you hate your advisor at some point, but negative thoughts like "I'm not really excited about the thought of you being around for several more years" would not improve the situation. Once you try to be positive, then you are better at coping. When I appreciate my advisor her time to go through my manuscript, I feel much better, even though I don't like her comment!

It is definitely very difficult to take his comment of "whether you will progress through the program". How about you sit down with him and work out what you should do to improve progress? Having a personal relationship with your advisor is good in this aspect because it is easier for you to raise concerns to him. I think if you work out how you can improve and you are working towards it, then he has less to criticise you in this aspect. 

Hope this helps. 

[cowgirlsdontcry]

1 hour ago, serenade said:

He has told me that he feels unsure about my ability to pass both of those things, and that he honestly doesn't know if I am someone who will continue to completion or be forced to leave this semester. I understand that he is just being honest and doing his job. I wouldn't expect any less, of course. But it is really difficult when someone you respect so much and who you have some type of relationship with as a person tells you those things (or any criticism, really). When I hear him say things like, "I really don't know if you'll progress through the program" what my brain hears is "I'm not really excited about the thought of you being around for several more years." That can be devastating. It's hard for me not to interpret things personally (though I understand this is a problem). 

I understand why you feel like this, but he is only doing his job as your advisor. Have you talked to him about specifics as to why he thinks you won't progress through the comps to your dissertation proposal? Have you failed your comps previously? Usually, they give you two shots at it before asking you to leave. If you have done the proper research, your proposal shouldn't be that difficult to write. If you haven't written one before, it can be daunting. I had two professors who started with UGs doing proposals for their final papers, in order for us to learn the mechanics of how to do one. I finished my master's thesis proposal last fall. Sometimes, advisors and committees will want an annotated bib and sometimes not. You don't say what field, but I'm basing this on what I am familiar with--English.

[AP]

I think you are saying two very different things. 

On the one hand, you are bummed about the prospect of not continuing into a Phd. On the other, you are struggling with accepting this as a 'professional' piece of criticism. 

It is very hard not to take things personally because we sacrifice a lot to be in grad school. I'm an international student, and I left a good job, my friends, my things behind to come here. It was my choice, a personal choice about my professional life. So, like you, sometimes I find it hard not to take things personally. Further, I think of all my friends attending grad school with children! They literally leave a piece of them aside to be here. The way to cope with this is knowing very clearly where the line between personal and professional is. For example, a professor sent me an e-mail today about a possible professionalization seminar (ironic, right?) he will give the Tuesday after Labor Weekend. I told him my family is going to be visiting until Wednesday and that, if possible, I'd prefer the seminar to be any other day that week. My family doesn't visit much, never actually. So I'm not going to sacrifice one day with them for one seminar. I know this now, in fourth year. I'm sure this line I talk about will shift because life changes. 

Now, yes, it is his job to be honest with you and you should be thankful for that honesty. If he is a mentor to you like you said, saying those things must have been really hard. That said, I'm sure that you can work out a plan together. Big questions to ask: Why does he think you won't succeed? What skills does he think you haven't fully developed? What evidence does he have to support this? Did you know you needed these skills? What broad change do you need to do? Smaller questions to ask: What can you do each month or each week to improve your situation? [Anecdote: after my first class in my first semester with my advisor, she sent me an e-mail about my final paper. It was a horrible e-mail, not because of what she said but because of what I felt. I went to her office and she walked me through the paper. It was a messy paper. She gave me one week to correct it otherwise, I'd be out. I don't know where I got the strength to do this, but I nailed it and stayed]. 

Talk to your advisor.

[fuzzylogician]

13 hours ago, serenade said:

When I hear him say things like, "I really don't know if you'll progress through the program" what my brain hears is "I'm not really excited about the thought of you being around for several more years." That can be devastating. It's hard for me not to interpret things personally (though I understand this is a problem). 

If he has been a good and supportive advisor, I think you may benefit from seeing this statement in a completely different way: "I enjoy having you as a student and worry about not having you around after this semester". If it were me in this situation, that is what I would mean by such a statement, with every intention of wanting you to stay, if that's what you want. I understand that it's an unpleasant thing to hear, and I'm sure it's a difficult thing to say. I hope that you've been able to ask why and to ask for help in passing, since I'm sure that's your ultimate goal and that's something your advisor wants for you. He may be seeing systemic issues with how you approach problems or with your work style that he may think are incompatible with the life of an academic, and those are hard to fix (and just to be very very clear, that doesn't diminish you and your work in any way, it's simply that it takes a specific kind of person to really succeed *and be happy* in academia). But he may still have thoughts, and there may be some habits you can change, or skills you can learn. So, while this is a difficult conversation, since he's initiating it, it's important to follow through and really have it.

[TakeruK]

I think it's a really easy trap to try to infer more meaning into what our advisors say than what they actually said. But if you want to overthink it, or if you know you will be prone to overthinking it, I like fuzzylogician's advice to think about the positive meanings too, not just focus on the negatives. After all, *you* are in charge of your overthinking, so why not, right?

I also think that some advisors are not very good at mentoring their students. And that some advisors can make mistakes sometimes. One example I noticed in this thread is what @Hope.for.the.best's advisor said ("not convinced that [you] used other papers as a guide"). I think advisors should generally keep criticism away from their student's efforts, because they don't know for sure how hard the student worked. Instead, it's far better and far more helpful to keep the criticism to the output/product and discuss how the student could improve. If you don't think your student is spending enough time (or spending their time in the wrong way), there are many other approaches to helping your student manage their time/efforts instead of basically saying they didn't try hard enough.

The reason I say this is because one thing that helps me and many students avoid taking criticism too harshly or too personally is to remember that not all advisors are great mentors and they screw up sometimes. Your advisor doesn't have absolute authority to judge you as a person, so even if they don't like your work, that doesn't mean you have no other value. 

For @serenade, fuzzy's tip above is helpful to manage how you feel towards your advisor's criticism. I think it might also be helpful to clarify your advisor's intentions when you feel this way. For example, from your post, it's not super clear if your advisor is saying these things to motivate you in order for you to pass these exams because they want to keep you as their student, or if they are trying to give honest career advice that they think you should leave the program. One thing that helps me use criticism effectively is to ask the person what they would suggest I do differently. If they don't have good answers, then it's easier for me to dismiss their criticism as someone who just wants to put others down. Even if they are right, I don't really have time/energy in my life to deal with non-constructive criticism. If they have good answers, then I know that they have thought about it carefully and care about my success and that helps me not feel as bad about the criticism. 

[serenade]

Thanks, everyone. You guys are so supportive. AP, I think you're right. These are two different issues (though they often seem to conflate in my mind). 

On the learning how to improve front: I've initiated several conversations with my advisor about what gives him doubt about me progressing through the program, and I think I've learned where my weaknesses are and how to take small steps to improve. Still incredibly difficult and stressful, but not entirely opaque, so that's good. 

However, what's more upsetting for me is that I feel like my advisor is indifferent when he says he doesn't know if I'll stay in or not. The fact that it doesn't seem hard for him at all really gets to me. On the one hand (and the most important hand), he is my advisor and has to be able to say these things dispassionately. I get that. But on the other, it's hard to see that someone with whom I've cultivated a close relationship over the past two years seems completely indifferent to whether I stick around or not. Herein the dilemma of understanding the advising relationship as both professional and personal. The personal side can sometimes sting. 

What is everyone's opinions about talking about this with him? I have a fairly close relationship with him (there are other professors who I would never dream of discussing something so personal with). At my last meeting with him, I briefly discussed how it can be hard for me not to take it as a personal reflection of myself when i feel like I'm underperforming. He was sympathetic (but then we got cut short because it was time for his next appointment). But I've thought about brining up the issue specifically of having a difficult time not taking his own assessment of me personally. Do you think that would be a good idea? 

Fwiw, I've also been seeing a university counselor to discuss these types of issues and I also told my advisor that and that I'm not attempting to confuse talking with him as the same thing as talking to a trained counselor but that for certain issues (like why I feel like I'm failing academically), it was helpful to talk to him as well in the role of advisor. 

[Hope.for.the.best]

I don't know you and your advisor well, so it is difficult to give good advice. From your description, you briefly raised your concern over criticism to him and he was sympathetic, so perhaps you could continue on where you were when you get a chance. I would suggest that you do so when you both are in "personal" mode, e.g. having a cup of coffee at a cafe. I am not sure whether it works in your case; maybe limit all academic-related conversations in the office and personal conversations out of the office. It may help set a healthy boundary between academic and personal. I haven't done that to my advisors because I only meet them in the office for academic matters and I rarely meet them otherwise, but I do that to my colleagues. In the lab/office, I only talk to them about academic matters, like how experiments are done. I normally refuse casual conversations politely if they start them off in the wrong place. Once in the common room or out of office, I am more than happy to chit-chat with them. This works for me as I don't get so distracted with personal matters in an academic environment. One thing I also do is I never add any of my colleagues in social media. Not because I don't value them as good friends, but because I wish to maintain that healthy boundary between academic and personal. I don't mind telling them I had a great time on weekend in the common room, but I mind them discussing how my weekend went from stalking my Facebook! 

I guess your advisor has had a lot of students and chances are he has come across students struggling, so it is not of such a big deal to him that he has to sound very worried/upset etc. to say that you are not progressing well. It may be different for each person - to me, I would rather my advisor says I am not progressing well in an emotionless manner rather than feeling very hard for me. The latter would make me panic more because it seems like he is not able to do anything to help me and that is it for me. If I were you, I would focus on what I should do to get myself back on track rather than how he delivers criticism. It is good that you are making plan to improve, go for it. It is also great that you are talking to a counsellor so you don't get too stressed out.  

[hats]

When I've been in vaguely similar situations (like, is my friend going to transfer to another program or job—I've never done this at the higher end of a power differential), I think people sometimes find me frustratingly agnostic. If my friend wants to transfer out of my college or switch professional fields or whatever, though, sure I'll miss them—but my primary orientation is towards them doing what's best for them. So I don't usually go all in on the "no, you can't leave, please stay at this company where we're working together!!!" thing, because inside I'm hoping that they find the job that makes them more happy than not. If their happiness leads away from me, well, I hope we still keep in touch and I'm happy that they made the right decision for their life as a whole. Even if I really love them as a person, I don't want them to stay at our job together if our job is making them unhappy.

I have no idea if this is at all helpful, but earlier we were talking about different ways to frame things so I thought I might mention this one about the new issue.

[Sigaba]

On 7/30/2017 at 9:01 PM, serenade said:

What is everyone's opinions about talking about this with him? I have a fairly close relationship with him (there are other professors who I would never dream of discussing something so personal with). At my last meeting with him, I briefly discussed how it can be hard for me not to take it as a personal reflection of myself when i feel like I'm underperforming. 

From his perspective, he may feel as upset as you in his own way and for different reasons.

It may well be that from his perspective, he's done everything he can (and more) to support you so you can improve your performance but from his perspective (if not also his peers') improvement hasn't happened. If this is his trajectory of thought, he may performed a binary evaluation of your capabilities: you can't improve or you don't want to improve.

Based upon your posts in this thread, it seems that you're motivated--you want to improve. In a binary evaluation, one in his position might conclude that because you want to improve, and he's helped you, you may not have it in you to improve. If this is his line of thought, he's forgetting the precept that if a student is motivated to learn but doesn't, the failure is the teacher's not the students. (If anyone reading this post is working as a teaching assistant or GSI, try thinking this through when you're evaluating blue books or essays. You'll go from  at a student to  about your skills as an educator.) 

In this speculative formation, his comments about you not being able to stick around might be him trying to change your motivation. That's easier to do as a teacher than to ask "How am I failing in my mission as a teacher with this student?"

Here's my recommendation.

Identify the specific skills one needs to have to pass quals and to submit a successful dissertation proposal. Perform a frank self-assessment at your level of proficiency in each of those skills. The assessment should include strengths, weaknesses, skills that are good to go, and skills that need work. Make a matrix or some other type of graphical representation of your self assessment. Then initiate a conversation with your mentor in which you compare notes. Identify areas for skill improvement. Work with him to develop a list of examples of how you should be doing it. Then, on your own, break down those examples to understand how they work and find ways to incorporate elements into your way of doing things. 

For example, if your writing is inefficient, identify a writer or two from whom you can learn concision. If you're not good with details (names, dates, key figures), start using flashcards. If your reading comprehension isn't where you need it to be, remember that you'll never be ready for quals, and then figure out tactics--not "strategies"--that enable you to read for argument more effectively. If you're not good at verbal communication, find ways to calm your nerves, compose your thoughts, and kick ass and take names in one on one and group conversations. Maybe you will benefit from a different mix of humor, deference, authority, confidence, anger, and rage. Well, maybe not anger and rage. They have their limits. Or so I've heard. (Look! A glass ceiling!)

You might want to inspect briefly your "constellation of motivational factors." Are you trying to please your advisor as a friend or are you trying to earn his respect as his intellectual equal and a professional in training? And so on. While tinkering with your motivation at this point is probably not the best use of your time at this stage of your graduate career, it may be good to realize that you're bringing something to the conversation that is getting in your way.

Please keep in mind that this recommendation assumes full and complete implementation on your part, and that it is offered "as is" without guarantee or warranty. (Can you tell I work in the private sector for a consultancy? CYA risk management language like this awaits you if you leave the Ivory Tower.)

#HTH