Criticism

No one likes to be criticised. Even the most 'constructive' criticism can feel like a punch in the gut.

There are some careers where the person's work is criticised by the the armchair public. Acting, music, writing, and politics come to mind. In 'real world' careers, those that have hierarchical management structures, employees can be criticised on specific work, but an annual review which involves criticism is almost always mandatory. Some employee / employer relationships manage this process better than others, but no employee actually enjoys it. And for good reason. Even at it's best, it tends to be a list of subjective items to change without any direction on how to change it, how to measure if it's been changed, and often times, why it's beneficial to the employee/team/manager/organization. This form of criticism comes across more like a parent telling an eight year old child what to do.

I'm now in the world of academia where criticism is an on-going part of any piece of work you do. At first I dreaded this process having had very painful and unproductive experiences with the 'real world' types of criticism. And I'm not going to lie, the first six months of feedback was very painful, but now, I love getting a paper back with line upon line of feedback, corrections and suggestions. I don't come away from it feeling stupid or ridiculed or rejected but instead feel smarter and more capable and reassured that I do know what I'm doing.

I think this is the kind of criticism that employers in the 'real world' want to have but lack the skills to achieve it. Or maybe it's a sign that I am finally in the right career for me.

Signing-off

No, don't worry, I'm not signing-off blogging. (though my lack of blogging on a regular basis may have lead you to think this.) This blog post is about signing-off email.

In the States, typical professional and semi-professional email is generally signed-off as:

Thank you, Sincerely, and Thanks! (And if I know you well, to be followed by something silly like Heidi Hamburglar Hughes.)

Here in the UK, most of the email I recieve from colleagues ends:
With Regards, Best Wishes, All the Best, and Cheers.

Cheers seems to me to equal in tone and relationship as Thanks. I like it. I'll use it with people that I've exchanged more than one email with.

With Regards, Best Wishes and All the Best? The tone of these sound more like 'up yours'.

A recent email started with 'Hi Heidi' (which if I'm to understand correctly is a very American and overly friendly salutation) and ended with 'All the Best'. So are you telling me in a very friendly way to get bent?

Let me say, that if I can't figure out the tone and meaning of email sign-off, I'm a bit worried about spending two years trying to interpret UK employees in their daily work-place behavior.