Mirrors

My latest Facebook status is a quote from Seth Godin's blog. (You should check it out - he's got some very thought-provoking things to say:  http://sethgodin.typepad.com) It goes something like this:

"There are more mirrors available than ever. Sometimes, though, what's missing is the willingness to take a look."

Here's my take on it. We live in a world with potentially endless instant feedback. It's up to us to decide to make that a good thing. This is definitely an area with which I struggle. I've spent too much of my life happy with "good enough", and although I recognize that I need to work on that, it still is very hard for me to seek, or even just accept, honest constructive criticism. As a teacher, I have the luxury that a lot of my feedback comes from teenagers, so it is easy to discount the parts I don't like. I can always say that they don't understand, or that they are just angry that I'm going the "tough love" route.

When I was a Department Chair (a position I stepped down from this year, which resulted in my best teaching year in a decade!) I worked with several teachers who approached the mirrors their students held up to them from the opposite direction. 70 students would have very positive things to say in their teacher evaluations and 5 would be extremely negative (commonly called the "class assassins"). Those teachers would completely discount the 70 and focus only on the 5. Obviously that is not a healthy approach either.

Watching my wife's career as a research scientist, it is easy for me to realize that I would never survive in that profession. Without brutally honest critique and questioning, science cannot progress reliably. When a scientist presents her research at an academic conference, she has to be prepared for a relentless attack. If I were in that position, I would shrivel under the pressure. A successful scientist has to realize that the only goal that matters is uncovering scientific truth, and that without that kind of questioning, we will never find that truth. When my wife writes a paper to submit for publication, she seeks out the most brutal reviewers she can find to help her edit her work before submission. Because of that, she has a very high acceptance rate at some of the most respected journals in her field. Criticism just makes her work better, so she seeks it out, where I tend to shy away from it.

What is the difference between those of us who can look ourselves straight in the eye in all the various mirrors available to us and those of us who look the other way as we sneak past? How do you find the courage to really stop and take an honest look? I hope that, as long as I'm asking that question, there's still hope for me!