Assignment 26 | Evan Winkler

Personally, I have always had trouble with feedback-related assignments, mostly because I find it more productive to focus on my own mistakes and what I can learn from then and how I can improve, rather than to be frustrated with other people and what they have done or with whatever arbitrary parameters existed around me. Ultimately, I know that the only person I have final executive control over is myself, which makes me hesitant to criticize others on how they could have better helped me.

As long as other people's actions and methods were good enough, I don't want to make them feel like they need to change just for the sake of pleasing me. The changes they might make as a result could make things worse for themselves or others, and I have to consider people besides myself when talking to others about the jobs they do. Furthermore, I rarely feel confident in my own ability to fairly and correctly assess what factors were good or bad for me. It is often hard to discriminate what made you feel good and what was good for you in your mind, and it is also often hard to imagine exactly how you 'would have done' if something, let alone multiple things, had been different.

To answer the question as best I can, it's hard for me to say how well the course prepared me for the exam because I have no standard to compare anything to. This year was my first time in this class, and each method of teaching the course was therefore new in its effect on learning the course. Things which I felt were very effective were the timed writing assignments, as well as the inner/outer circle discussion activities. Personally, I was not as affected by the 'class grading' of each others' responses; they were somewhat rushed in my opinion and had little room for deep thought into the quality of each graded paper. I don't think we had enough time to constructively criticize each other in a back-and-forth manner as we did in the inner/outer circle discussions.