As I discussed in my previous reflection, belongingness had been crucial for fostering our class's positive experience in the Fimbel wood shop. What is more, that belongingness had been generated by Kris, Mo, Audrey, and all of my classmates putting in the effort to be kind and curious about their clamshell construction. It turns out kindness and curiosity amplify belongingness like an echo chamber does to sound. As a result, I have a massive desire to engage in future woodworking projects.
Another thing I touched upon previously was feedback, which can have a massive impact on belongingness, particularly in terms of making or breaking it. This is because feedback is prone to getting mucked up in the giver's opinions, biases, and emotions. And this is not always a helpful thing...
Themes: Belongingness, feedback
Take me, for example: I am prone to highlighting the wins––extolling them, even. I love going out of my way to invite their participation, point out their strengths, and make them feel more comfortable. It makes me feel like a good person and usually increases the other person's sense of belongingness in our shared space. And in some situations, this works out great! When I play D&D for example, I use my characters as a proxy to interact with quieter table mates and make their characters look "good" as a result.
But wins are only part of the story. While highlighting them can be great in great in the world of feedback, I often do so at the cost of holding back any honest opinions that bear the slightest hint of the Big Bad Judgment. I omit the things that could be improved because I dread upsetting someone and feeling like the "bad guy." This in and of itself can be extremely self-serving and not helpful at all to the feedback recipient. Sometimes, I think people can also tell when positive feedback is forced, and that is not good for anyone's sense of belongingness. However, I am getting better at recognizing this fear, and circumventing it! Strategies like compliment sandwiches, "I" statements, and knowing my audience has been extremely helpful when I give feedback to others.
I understand these methods do not work for everyone and are not appropriate in every situation. I was in one of those situations a week ago. Not in iDesign while giving feedback on Willa's work, but when I was playing D&D a day later. I know D&D is not an academic thing, but what happened made me reflect on what makes communication effective and ineffective.
For context, the seven of us were sitting around a table having just eaten dinner, and were in the middle of a combat scene. One player who was particularly experienced sat next to someone who was struggling to get used to their character's battle mechanics (D&D battles can last hours, and if you're new to the game or particular style of play they can last even longer). Generally, D&D etiquette for new players looks like cheering them on, pointing out where they are on the battle map, and celebrating their successes. "Feedback" is usually only given if it is solicited by the newbie or if they are doing something mechanically wrong. But this is not what happened during our game.
Instead of being a supportive teammate, Experienced Player took control like a helicopter parent. They gave unsolicited advice, questioned Struggling Player's memory of the rules, and wrote down notes on Struggling Player's character sheet. Struggling Player repeatedly declined this patronizing assistance, and finally snapped. They told Experienced Player they were being "very rude," and we had to pause the game to break up their fight. Neither of them wanted to take the conversation outside, so nothing got resolved. They stewed in silence until the end of the session, with Experienced Player giving angry side comments like "I was only trying to help!" "Why were you yelling at me?" "I just wanted to speed up the game," "You know what, fuck it!" "What's your character's name again? Oh right, Sophia!" (It was Cynthia). It was not good. Experienced Player made themselves out to be self-centered and close-minded. Experienced Player also confronted our DM (Dungeon Master) alone after everyone left, which our DM told me was terrifying after I checked in via text (this is their first time being a DM). As a whole, Experienced Player's feedback-adjacent antics tanked much of our party's belongingness and turned feelings of excitement into anxiety for our next session (which is Friday, October 18). It just goes to show that the how of someone's help can be even more important than its productiveness.
These past two weeks have taught me a lot about how feedback and belongingness manifest in academic and non-academic spaces. I feel like they are often seen as opposites; a sliding scale with feedback at one end and belongingness on the other. This can create spaces with the atmospheres of belongingness < feedback (meaning feedback is more valued than belongingness) and belongingness > feedback (meaning belongingness is more valued than feedback).
But what about spaces where feedback = belongingness?
In academia, I have encountered two types of feedback: Professor-to-student and student-to-student. The first traditionally fosters environments where the professor is judge and jury, and the students must compete to be the best of the best; where belongingness < feedback. It is the place where I might submit a research paper and get it back covered in red pen marks. Logically, the marks indicate areas that could be improved– – feedback. Emotionally, my gut tells me they indicate "wrongness." This was especially true until my junior year of college. Before then, I took all feedback personally, and viewed it as an assessment of my character. After all, every creation we make is a manifestation of our character, no matter how much we plagiarized, used reference, or bullshitted. This made me an extremely sensitive perfectionist who could win the game of GPA through hours of toil, days of self-isolation, and months of anxiety.
I put belongingness on hold. So what if I was lonely? If I got my work back without any fucking pen marks, I was the best person around.
Right?
Speaking of friends, this brings me to the second type of feedback: student-to-student (i.e., peer-editing). Before iDesign, this setup facilitated environments where the students are the judges; where belongingness > feedback. This style was fresh and new and offered people a chance to be evaluated by peers, friends, and other friendly faces. However, I had gone to a middle school and high school where no one really cared about learning, and barely put any effort into feedback-giving; a lot of people wanted to be cool jocks, Silicon Valley-esque nerds, or pretty popular girls. In contrast, I was an asexual, aromantic, autistic, anti-dating, transgender, introverted nerd with ADHD (I only knew about the ADHD and introversion at that time). I cared about learning more than anything and spent hours writing feedback and ideas where people could improve or change things in their projects or essays. However, this would put a lot of people off. I realize now that these non-learners sacrificed the quality, execution, and effort of their feedback for the sake of feeling like they belonged in their respective friend hierarchies. While much of their belongingness probably stemmed from peer pressure, repression, drama, and masking, it made me feel oddly lonely.
Why couldn't I do that? Why didn't people like learning new things? Why couldn't I do what I needed to belong?
Again, I have gotten better at developing both sides of the belongingness/feedback spectrum while at college; friends and professors have been instrumental in it. But iDesign and Fundamentals of Maker Culture proposed the idea of "Why make this a spectrum at all? Why can't belongingness facilitate better feedback, and why can't feedback facilitate better belongingness?"
This "yes and" message has resonated throughout our sessions. Then, when we gave peer feedback for each other's final projects, I saw my imperfect scores and felt joy! I saw that imperfection could lead to awesomeness: It enhanced my creative direction (spooky Halloween-style) and areas of focus (i.e., engagement, comprehensibility). What is more, when I gave feedback to others, I compressed my rambling thoughts into their smallest, most understandable kernels to avoid overwhelming/turning off my peers. I did all of this while holding what I learned in years prior, and I am so proud of myself! I just hope I can maintain this mindset in the future.