I sit down to write a self review. I’ve been told that it’s good for me, it gives me a benchmark, it helps me gain perspective on my own opinion, it makes me better for the self review. I’ve got a blank page in front of me. That’s not helping. I go and check the qualities - yup. Can confirm, there’s stuff I’m bad at. Page is still blank. Writing a self review can be daunting. In the judge program, the term “Self Review” has connotations connecting it to the L3 process
I coin a lot of words and phrases related to feedback. Usually, these are complete nonsense. But sometimes the framework of this good game we play and judge offers a phrase with usefulness beyond rules enforcement. This is true of protection, a keyword that prevents something from being blocked, targeted, dealt damage, or enchanted [by a quality]. In this blog’s context, we can understand “protection from feedback” to be a characteristic that makes an individual incredibly difficult to
Last year, I was chatting with some judges in the Mid-Atlantic Slack about review counts, and one of them mentioned that he felt that reviews written was not a great metric to track – that quality mattered more than quantity. My response was the idea that quantity is its own quality. Receiving a well-written review is obviously more beneficial than receiving a poorly written review. But the difference in benefit between receiving a review and not receiving one is much greater. And while I always
Grand Prix Milwaukee, my last major event of the year, is in the books. 2016 was a big year for me as a judge – I worked 13 Grand Prix, 5 Opens, 2 Regional Championships, and 5 PPTQs. I served as a Head Judge for my biggest event to date, coordinated about 350 PPTQs in the Mid-Atlantic Region, took headshots for about 200 judges, and presented at 4 judge conferences. And I was promoted to Level 3, the culmination of hundreds of hours of effort by a lot of people, some of whom I’ve never met in
Welcome back to the thrilling conclusion of the self evaluation series. If you’re just joining me, be sure to go back to Parts One, Two, and Three. This week, as the second half of my advice on how to write your Level 3 Self Review, I’ll be covering the final five Qualities of a Premier Judge. TEAMWORK, DIPLOMACY, AND MATURITY Grouped Qualities like this can be difficult to write about because they encompass related, yet different, aspects of you. In fact, this Quality used to be two separate
Over the last couple of months we’ve explored the general value of introspection and self reviews. This value is one of the reasons that the Level 3 Advancement Process requires a comprehensive Self Review (in caps to distinguish it from normal self reviews). It’s important for L3s to be able to examine themselves honestly and critically. This month I’ll go over four of the Qualities of a Premier Judge (L3), as well as offer quick tips for using these qualities to evaluate yourself with
You know how excited parents celebrate their children’s first tottering attempts at walking? How they ooh and ah and cheer and gasp and take dozens of pictures to post on social media? When I visited my parents recently, they did not cheer even though I walked quite well. Obviously my parents love me, but they no longer celebrate when I walk across a room without falling. Why not? They now expect me to walk proficiently. While I may have been clumsy as a teenager, with a pair of designated
This month’s contribution to the Self-Review Series comes from the editor’s desk. Thanks, , for letting me jump in. Self-reviews are pointless. They take too much time. They’re redundant. Part One of this series is meant to convince you otherwise. All the same, Riki and I have recently asked a number of judges why they don’t write self-reviews, and those responses are the most common. Today, I want to posit my own theory on why self-reviews are written so rarely: Self-reviews
I started getting more involved in the Judge Program in the Spring of 2011, after a long hiatus from judging. My town was having some issues running events, and I was the only L1+ in a 200 mile radius so, after getting more involved, I desired to get better at judging. One of the major steps I took was regularly writing self-reviews. When I first started judging back in 2005, judges were required to write a self-analysis annually to maintain their L1. In these reviews, I wrote my
Welcome to the first edition of the Feedbag! The goal of this column is to provide judges with a feedback resource, so that you have somewhere to go for help if you have questions about a review you’re writing or just want some general advice. Riki’s focus has been on self-reviews lately, and fittingly our first Feedbag submission is on that topic as well. Dan Jackson writes, “I was wondering if you had any advice or tips for a L2 working on their first self-review. I've taken a lot of