This is not a “poor me” discussion, so please don’t take it that way.
I think that it takes a certain type of attitude to invite criticism from others. For example, I like to utilize the “One Minute Papers” that the school offers at the end of class. I generally don’t read them for a few days so that I don’t react emotionally to what’s said in them. Sometimes I don’t agree with the comments, sometimes the comments are about things that I can’t change in the course do to the way it’s written, but other times the comments will strike a chord within me that makes me realize that I didn’t do something correctly or a student left class more confused or less educated about a subject than when they came into class.
It is extremely humbling to have to read some of the responses I get sometimes (and not always in a good way). However, when you read them with a teachable attitude and a spirit of improving yourself, you can get through it, you can pick up some new knowledge that you didn’t have before, and you can especially improve yourself when you encounter the same situation the next time.
Abraham Lincoln knew what it meant to face criticism. He is quoted as saying, “If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how—the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what’s said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”
Lincoln, against huge opposition, went on to reunite the fractured United States, win the Civil War, and abolish slavery in the US. Had he allowed his critics to defeat him, Lincoln would not have accomplished what he did.
