peer feedback

I worked hard to finish my memo to UWest. It is really a brief proposal on my research idea. So today during our weekly writing group meeting, I presented the memo, together with the complete IRB package (forms, consent, 1-page description) to my peers.

As usually, my peers gave me extremely valuable feedback on my memo. It is funny that I promote peer critique in my own class but am so pleasantly surprised when I receive insightful feedback from my own peers, as if I wasn't expecting this method to work. There are some writings that need clarifications, and some arguments or assertions need to be re-written to avoid controversial. There were parts that I knew was not quite there and there were some questions that helped me look at my writing from the readers' perspective.

After class tonight, as exhausted as I was, I decided to go ahead and make all the changes suggested to me. I tell myself that this memo does not need to be "perfect"; it only needs to be presentable. With that in mind, I actually finished the revision and sent it off to Bil.

I felt a great sense of accomplishment. I still feel awfully a lot of time has been spent on documentation and the "real" stuff has not yet to begin. But at least tonight I sent the memo out, signaling another landmark made!

Be content with what you can do given the circumstances. Is seeking perfection like chasing after a moving target?