Learning to Take Criticism

Learning to Take Criticism

Criticism is funny; it helps you by pointing out the problem. There are two types of criticism: the kind you can easily build on, which is constructive, and the kind someone says to make fun of the flaws someone has, which is destructive; I’ve been on the receiving end of both types. The only appropriate time to criticize is if you know it will help the other person. Knowing you have a flaw is one thing because you know it’s there and it’s your choice to fix it and make it better. It’s even better when someone else points out the flaw. Then you will want to fix it because you know you’re not the only one who noticed it. My teachers, my track coach, and even I have criticized me in one way or another. Over time, and through my experiences, I’ve learned to take criticism, and build on them, to turn my flaws into something positive.

Sometimes, Teachers can teach you through criticizing your goals. A few times when I was talking about my goals with my English teacher, she told me it was immature for a high school senior to have an imagination like mine. She was criticizing my imagination and my goals. I liked to use my imagination on my English papers, but she criticized me by saying, “You talk too much about the topic, and you don’t use enough facts!” I took the constructive criticism, and when my imagination went wild on my English papers, I backed my points up with facts. She also thought my goals for the future were impossible. I have a goal to become a college level athlete, and an actor, which she thought I was fantasizing too much. Whenever I came back to my goals, the teacher told me that if I didn’t change my goals, she wouldn’t discuss them with me. I took her criticism and accepted it. I’ve built on it, and now the goals of becoming an actor and a college level athlete aren’t as impossible as she thought.

Being criticized by your coach can have a negative or a positive effect on you, it all depends how you take it. I was talking to my track coach about some homework he gave me, and out of the blue he told me I was never going to become a professional athlete. After every track meet, after I ran my first race, my coach said I looked to comfortable, I should run faster, even though I ran till I was exhausted. I always ran my hardest in the last race I was in, and my coach didn’t like that, so he said