I think we are about done here. I have made several attempts to explain that there are different ways of critiquing. Here’s one more try, from a completely different area: I have heard from many academics that hazing, at conferences and in thesis/dissertation defenses, is the norm, and frequently quite painful. The point of writing a doctoral dissertation (called a thesis in some places) is that you become the expert on that topic. The program where I got my degree takes many grad students to conferences every year. They are well prepared, deliver excellent papers on the whole, and are well received. My dissertation defense was wonderful. I had spent such a big chunk of my life and poured myself onto that writing. To sit with a group of brilliant people who had all read it all the way through and were prodding me to make it stronger, from a position of having taken the time for it and wanting me to be the best I could be, was just the warmest, most loving thing imaginable. They trusted that I had done my work and asked me hard questions. I could answer them, because I had indeed done the work. That was the tradition in my department. We prepared hard for the defense, because we wanted to do ‘em proud, and we did. Not every day is a doctoral defense, but if that can be such a joy fest—and there are many studies that show people learn best and are more amendable to change when they are happy than when they feel beaten down—then I think it is entirely possible for other corrections and suggestions for improvement to be made in a way that is clear and also builds people up.
I’ll repeat this part too: I’ve seen various things by the presenters of WNTW in recent years, and they all seem to have come to the same conclusion, that the milk of human kindness goes well with everything.
