Being able to han­dle and learn from crit­i­cism is an impor­tant trait to have in order to be suc­cess­ful in our society.

Most of us will leave uni­ver­sity life and hope­fully find a great job that we love. Most of us will receive some type of feed­back that requires us to change how we per­form at that job and how we react and absorb that cri­tique is impor­tant. Right now we get that feed­back in the grades we receive on papers and assign­ments. It’s less direct, less per­sonal. It doesn’t feel so much like an attack on our integrity or a maneu­ver by an antag­o­nist, but an eval­u­a­tion of our effort.

We can use any num­ber of excuses as to why we may be less inclined to accept that crit­i­cism. The pro­fes­sor is a tough grader. He doesn’t know any­thing. I was too tired when I wrote this from work­ing on a dif­fer­ent assignment.

That’s fine. We can make excuses for our­selves now if we so choose. But as adults, crit­i­cism becomes more direct and blunt. It isn’t a per­cent­age of approval at the top of the paper. Handling those sit­u­a­tions with grace and char­ac­ter are the true mea­sure of matu­rity and some­thing that no one can claim to per­fec­tion and all must seek to improve upon.

When the Torch receives let­ters to the edi­tor, like the one on page 16, it forces us to review our thoughts and from that, we improve. It doesn’t have to do with agree­ment or being cor­rect; sim­ply put, it allows us to greater solid­ify or even change our beliefs and learn.

Players receive com­mands and orders from coaches who seek con­tin­ued improve­ment in their per­for­mance. We may even fault our lead­ers for not being as active or shar­ing our same opin­ions, but the infre­quency of back­lash they may place on those crit­i­ciz­ers demon­strates excep­tional fortitude.

We could all do with a lit­tle more prac­tice when it comes to accept­ing and inter­pret­ing crit­i­cism, espe­cially if we ever run into a time when we’re giv­ing some of our own to others.