lifehack.org: "“You suck.”
Everyone encounters criticism, whether it is a boss pointing out falling performance, a bad review for your book, or even self-criticism after an embarrassing slip-up. Your ability to digest that criticism and make use of it says a lot about your character. Even better is to be the kind of person who can take a sharp, verbal critique, stand up and ask for more."
4 comments:
First, my favorite bit from the article: "If you aren’t making a fool of yourself routinely, you probably aren’t being ambitious enough." Wonderful. I must be quite ambitious then!
I know last year I would shy away from doing things because I was worried about looking stupid, but it just made me actually more stupid in the end. But I'm learning, getting better, and just letting myself act like the ambitious fool I am.
We're told that if we're going to fail, this is the place to do it. And it's true. This is the place to take those chances and go out on a limb, maybe to fail, but you'll learn an extraordinary amount from it, or maybe to have a glorious success that you never would have had otherwise. And if you don't go out on a limb and fail magnificently, then you won't get any good criticism except that you should've taken more risks, and then be asked to leave the school.
No, but really, that's what we need to do while we're here. Take risks. Fail. And get a lot of criticism. Because that's what we're here to do, learn and improve. Without criticism, and even (maybe most importantly) brutal criticism, we'll never get anywhere.
Where would we get without a good dose of criticism? It what we all need, otherwise we'll never improve and become as good as we can be.
Logically I want as much constructive criticism and honesty as possible, but it doesn't make it any easier to here something you don't like or aren't prepared for. I think it is incredibly important for people in our business to be aware of because it is something we deal with constantly and with personal things such as creavitity which is incredibly objective.
I really like criticism , true honest criticism. The worst thing someone in a critique can say is "it is/was nice" nice is so vague and nondescript, it is their way to respond positively while ultimately backing out of the question. When I give critiques I do try to sugarcoat things, which the author seemed to disapprove of. But I think if someone can look through the sugarcoat to see the true honest message although it was in a pleasant package. This is a tactic for the critic as well, since it is very hard to gauge whether a person actually wants you to be honest or reassuring when they request criticism.
I really thought the last section of these tips were far more helpful than the beginning. I am getting increasingly better at handling criticism, not necessarily overall, but how I deal with it in the moment. I generally won't put up too much of an argument (although that can sometimes be a bad thing), and I will constantly ask for how I can improve. The key really is to take what is said as a set of instructions, whether or not the criticizer is any good at presenting their criticism as such. I do not completely agree that this is the place to "fail", seeing as a lot of stress is put upon success in this school, but that is most likely the case in most academic settings. No one will full out encourage failure, that would seem too silly.
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