Artefact Swap

Hand your Dossier to the person on your left, take the one arriving from your right, and spend fifteen minutes reading a stranger’s semester. Then present it. Not your own — theirs — to a practitioner from your field who is in the tutorial room for the whole ninety minutes.

Why you present somebody else’s#

Two reasons, and both are load-bearing.

The first is that the critique becomes usable. A practitioner responding to the case says what they think, in the register they use at work. A practitioner responding to you, visibly hoping says something kinder and less true. The swap puts a metre of distance in the room and the honesty arrives through the gap.

The second is that it survives. You will hear your own materials criticised while not holding them, which is the only comfortable way anyone has found to hear it. You are also the one advocating for the work, so you arrive having read it properly — which is more attention than most of your materials have had from anyone other than their author.

The guests#

One practitioner per stream, hosted by that stream’s convenor, from that stream’s field. They are here as practitioners rather than as recruiters: the brief we give them is to say what the first ninety days in their team actually looks like for the person described in this Dossier, and where the competence lag would land.

They are not assessing anyone and they are not hiring anyone. If you want a question answered that is embarrassing to ask a person who might employ you, this is the room and this is the hour.

Building the ramp#

The second half is written, not spoken. You take your own Dossier back with the practitioner’s response attached and build a ninety-day ramp out of your week 3 gap map: what you close before you start, what you close in the first month by asking, what you close by month three by doing, and what you tell your manager in week one that you cannot yet do.

The last item is the one people delete. Leave it in. A ramp with no declared weakness is a document that will be quietly wrong by day ten.

Dates#

Assessment 3, your peer critique contribution, is due Friday 2027-05-14 — the three most substantial written critiques you gave this semester, each countersigned. Today’s written response to the swapped Dossier is eligible, and for many students it is the strongest of the three. Full brief at Assessment 3.

Leaving with#

Dossier §12: the ninety-day ramp plan, traceable line by line back to your gap map, plus the written critique you gave — a copy for them, a copy for you.