I find it really hard to say I hate certain people. Because everyone has redeeming qualities, always. But there are people in my Fundamentals of 2D Design class that just irk me. And its only because they can’t take criticism. 

There are plenty of people in that class I wouldn’t normally associate with but I do because they are genuinely nice people. I sit at a table with a sort of slow jock (he jokingly told me he needed me to take things down to a kindergarden level with him, so I’m not trying to be mean or presumptuous), a bubbly fashionista, a shy geeky kid and a hardcore skater. They’re all great. But the table next to me is filled with three people: an anime obsessed couple and an art girl. The two girls are beyond annoying to me.

The anime girl just complains. Always. It never stops. Every class, you can hear her loudly complaining about something, normally some authority figure: how the teacher was stupid or the people at the leasing office are dumb. She never stops. Today in a critique she kept firing back at the professor how he had told her to do certains things, or at least try them and so the parts of the piece he took issue with really weren’t her fault. Whatever, suggestions from a teacher don’t make them perfect ideas to abide by. She couldn’t grasp that and it was annoying. Needless to say her piece wasn’t successful and she couldn’t take responsibility for it. I feel sorry for her boyfriend to have to constantly hear someone just complain nonstop.

And the other girl is someone who is always at odds with anyone that feels a different way than her about a piece. Her ideas during critique are near final, or at least the way she defends them makes it seem that way. She attacks anyone’s opposing opinion, even the professor’s. Which isn’t inherently bad, to disagree I mean, but she’s been involved in art since high school, having gone to an art-specific school, and is a TA in an art class, so there’s this air of pomposity about her that is just incredibly rough. It’s an unwillingness to compromise or take things from a new perspective.

Not that art critiques aren’t about expressing opinions—because they are, the very premise of it welcomes free comments—but those two people can’t take criticism. And it’s a terrible quality that annoys me. The professor summed it up and tried to make people understand the situation when he said that if your audience, even one person, is getting something different or interesting from your piece, then you need to step back and really assess and think hey, this might be me doing something wrong, maybe I’m thinking of this in the wrong way, maybe my intent was lost in my execution. Because your audience can’t ever have a wrong feeling, its the most honest thing you’ll get. And I really wish people were more open to ideas. Because for God’s sake, you’re in an art class in college, you’re not a some prodigy or prophet. You’re a peon, here to learn and get better. Suck it up.

TL;DR Two girls in art class can’t take negative feedback. Get over it, you’re in a fucking art class to learn.