Getting feedback can be a great experience or a terrible one. The experience you have with feedback doesn’t necessarily reflect your efforts, it can often be the case that the feedback you are given just isn’t very good.

Feedback should be constructive, something which can be built upon and which can aid personal development. It is not a tool that should be used merely to voice what irks you about a person. Everyone can remember a time they have experienced negative feedback and you can be pretty certain that they didn’t act upon it. What was there to act upon?!

It is OK to give critical feedback but the thing that makes the feedback valuable is when it points out a problem and offers a solution.

Some people, including myself, find it a little uncomfortable to offer feedback- especially in circumstances such as peer review. I find myself becoming incredibly critical of my own responses; do I sound condescending? Is this going to convey the right message? Am I offering advice that can be worked on or am I just being overly critical? Others feel as though they can’t possibly offer feedback as they aren’t confident enough on the subject themselves.

With regards to the feedback I received from my peers for my recent practitioner enquiry post, I found the experience to be a positive one. I have been given tips with regards to improving my future posts using images and embedding links, things I wouldn’t have thought of without their input. Furthermore by actively commenting on my peers posts I began to feel more confident and comfortable with the idea of feedback. By reading their posts I was able to take away other viewpoints and ideas upon which I can now reflect.

All in all the process of feedback seems an invaluable one and one with which I shall continue to engage throughout my time at university and within my future career.