Criticism’s Hard to Take

It feels like I wrote my last column a lifetime ago, but it has really only been a little more than three months. The leaves have reddened and fallen away, and I was already recently back in Cape May County for Thanksgiving.
A lot has happened in my life since I was here last. I feel the increasing pressure to get my life into order. Am I taking the right classes? Am I working hard enough? How can I better swallow my anxiety? I took on the Editor-In-Chief position of Gordon College’s student newspaper, The Tartan, when I went back to school this semester.
I thought I knew how much work it takes to put out a newspaper, but spending 22 hours on a 24-page layout makes me think it’s a miracle that the Herald gets out every single week.
I came into this school year knowing that the format of The Tartan had to change. We had to throw away more than half of our issues some months last year simply because nobody was picking them up. I’ll never forget walking in the Gordon woods and finding an entire stack of Tartans rotting away in a cold puddle. I was almost a mile from campus. How does that even happen?
So this year has been a bit of a challenge. How do we get students to read this darn thing? It’s hard enough to get students to read their assignments, much less long-form articles. We call ourselves a magazine; we switched to a 24-page monthly newsprint magazine.
I really am proud of the two issues released so far. I am in charge of a 20-person staff, and I came into this year with big hopes for an increased readership and an overall higher quality paper. But oh man, did I almost die this last September. I hopped from budget-crisis to layout troubles to a last-minute nightmare editing-session.
When those first papers in ‘magazine’ format finally shipped to us, I realized in horror that we misspelled “anniversary” on this, our big 60th anniversary edition; 1,200 copies stared up at me, the biggest and most expensive run we had ever printed, with the words “60th ANNIVESARY EDITION.” We forgot the first R!
So, we coughed up money we barely had to pay for a massive reprint. I had to skip several classes to make the three-hour trek up to New Hampshire, where our printer is located, to get corrected copies. When I, bloodshot and broke, got back to campus late that night, I pushed the new boxes of corrected Tartans around on my skateboard to replace the 1,200 copies I had put out just the prior morning.
But we had done it. Hundreds of work hours and a costly reprint later, the first issue of our new magazine was ready for the campus to read. No, we didn’t move even close to 1,200 copies, even over the alumni weekend. But I was mostly humbled by the great response the new format got. People mostly seemed to love it!
But receiving harsh criticism can be hurtful and made me think, “Why am I doing this?” That’s a question I had to answer myself.
One comment I received said: “Reading half-assed student essays isn’t entertaining, but the new format is okay.” Notes like this confused me. After all, don’t they know how hard we slaved away to put out this free paper?
I got plenty of petty and back-handed responses like that from students. I told my friends and staff that they didn’t bother me, but it was hard to shake those words from the back of my mind.
But I realized that I am a hypocrite. I think of the student poems that I mocked in the college’s free poetry journal. I think of the plays that I so easily criticized. Most of all, I realize that criticism comes easier than almost anything in the world.
It takes no effort to pick apart the labored-over things in our lives. It’s easy to criticize, and it’s easy to join in on the criticism of others. But is this really who I want to be? I realized that those things I mocked had just as much love and work poured into them as The Tartan did.
Of course, there is always room for criticism. I want to get as much criticism and feedback about The Tartan as possible. But how often do I find myself needlessly tearing down the work of others instead of building them up? Proper, thoughtful criticism can even fall into the latter category.
I’ve learned a lot these past few months. I’ve learned to take harsh words in stride, but I’ve also learned to hold my tongue when I have needless, negative words to say. Again, what kind of person do I want to be? I want to be a person who thinks hard about what I say, and how I say it. I think gauging my criticism is as good a place to start as any.
Collin Hall is the grandson of the Herald publisher and the editor of the Tartan, Gordon College.