One of the things I make my production students do is send me a lessons learned document after every project. When I did this at the doc institute I would just have them make a bullet list. And also we'd sit in a circle and debrief based off those lists. That works better with grad students than undergrads. When I asked these kids to share what they've learned so that people who hadn't gone yet could avoid making the same mistakes all I got was crickets. I had to sit there silently for 2 minutes before anyone would offer something. But I still make them write something.
So because I think self-assessment is a useful thing, here are my lessons learned from my first semester on the tenure track:
