2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative

[Carolyn_Grace]

Originally Posted by Karthik

I've seen this sentiment a lot. While I agree that we shouldn't dwell on the negative, you can't improve if you don't focus on your faults. If a student gets an 85% on an algebra test, they shouldn't sit around looking at all the questions they got right, they need to critically assess the ones they got wrong.

Frankly, I think FIRST did a lot of amazing things this year and if I were grading them it would be in the 90-95% range. Still, we'd be remiss as a community if we didn't focus on that 5-10% that needs to be improved. It's all about striving for perfection.

Of course there's multiple ways to look at the negatives. You can rudely complain and not offer solutions. Or you can produce constructive criticisms that take us towards improvements and solutions. From what I've seen in this thread, it's definitely more of the latter.

This.
Plus, when you talk about Positives, there's not much more to comment on, other than, "Yep, I agree." But when you talk about Negatives, people are analyzing situations and trying to offer possible solutions. So, while the negative thread appears longer, I actually think that people have posted more positive items than negative. Of course, I'd have to take the time to list them out to be sure of this...anyone bored enough/have the time on their hands to do this?