(December 18, 2019 at 7:37 pm)NightHawk Wrote: Right now I am in Grad school. I am doing just fine. 3.45 GPA. However despite getting A's on 99% of my assignments it seems every time there is feedback that is critical I take it too personally. I am not really sure. However I just do! I like to think of myself of a rather humble person that can take advice and apply it. However, this critical feedback on papers and other assignments is hard for me to swallow. I try my hardest every time. So perhaps when I get that critical feedback it makes me question my ability.
Are you perhaps conflating constructive criticism with invalidation of your hard work? Doing lots of work and getting a high GPA doesn't exempt you from critical feedback, nor does critical feedback render what you did right pointless. "I try my hardest every time" tells me this might be the case. That you try hard always is not relevant to whether you could improve. You're doing your best work; it maybe could be better still, but getting straight A's is still extremely impressive and so there's clearly no reason to "doubt yourself" or let anyone cast doubt upon you.
Of course then there's the question of whether the feedback is valid or not. Or whether it's constructive or not. But those are separate questions. You sound like you don't want to be criticized at all if your grades are good.
Is this coming from professors or graduate assistants? Sometimes especially the latter don't feel they're doing their job if they don't find some way to have a comment. So their criticisms may be overdetermined. I get a lot of that at work; I can do heroic coding that does impossible things and saves the day and yet the instant I do that it's the new normal and someone will wonder if it couldn't be improved or could have taken less time or whatever. I barely notice it anymore, after over 30 years of it happening. Sometimes management just has to urinate on everything to mark territory. Sometimes people are just thinking out loud. Most of the time it's not nearly so personal as one could maybe take it.
