A few things I have learned, and also... I think they are called ruminations.

My photoshop professor said to look at critiques this way. If only one person says a thing, it might be opinion. But if many people look at your work and make the same comment, it's usually true.

In a different design class was where I was graced with the ability to accept criticism. This is how I came to understand it. You have to separate yourself from the piece. You may have created it, and it is a part of you, but it doesn't represent you.

And in a creative writing class, my professor said these few things. He didn't let us submit less than five pages of stuff, because it's difficult to do much with so little. Much of the material I've read so far on the forum is very short, and that worries me. Today, everything moves so fast. But books take patience.
That said, much more than five pages is risky, because if you happen to have a glaring error in your work that spans throughout, having it there might turn away critiqueres from reading the entire thing. I had an english professor do this to me once on a paper I had worked very hard on, and I was blown away. (the paper was fine.)

One more thing. One of the lessons I took away from the fall 2007 semester, a period of time that shall represent a slice of hell in my memory for evermore (deep breath) was this. I had always wondered why professors ask for work double spaced, but now I know why--it's so they can bloody read it! If you fill an ordinary sheet of paper with 1 inch margins, doublespaced 12 pt courier font with text, which I read is the standard for manuscripts, you find that it contains a little more than the ammount of words on an average page in a paperback novel. This was a great surprise to me, who always thought that doublespacing was cheating. In reality, doublespaced isn't cheating; single-spaced is just bulls---.

But besides that, doublespaced has a practical use to the critiquer. It gives you space to put all the notes, and you find out just how useful it is when you go and try to critique something on the forum. Where do you put your stuff? It makes me want to print everything out.

I often print stuff out to critique, espeically if I don't have time to do it properly online. Or I have a boring class the following day in school ;)

You're totally right - as are your professors. About seperating yourself from you work and all that - though I must say, it DID take me some time to stop seeing detailed critiques poitning out loads of mistakes as personal insults. Still, once you accept that there's always room for improvement, I think your writing can only get better. As long as one keeps and open mind.

So, wait, what exactly are you saying about teh five pages? First, you say that anything else is not enough to work with, which yeah, I can relate to no problem. But then you sy that writing more is risky - I get that, too. But what exactly are you saying through that regarding this forum?

Sorry. I tend to be a bit dim in the mornings, late as they may be :P

I guess what I meant was that five pages seems to me a happy medium (I hate saying that phrase... oooogh) between not enough to work with, and being overambitious. With the latter I wasn't really referring to anything in the forums; I guess I just wanted to complain about that one time with that evil professor.
In regards to the forum I guess I'm saying I wish I had more of everyone's stuff to read...

Not every work of merit is five pages long. It think it is worthwhile to develop longer pieces, but there's a lot to be said in favor of conciseness.

But double spacing is the standard for college and professional submissions precisely to leave room for edit notations. Although more and more people are evaluating electronic copies, paper submissions are still not uncommon, and some people prefer to make their initial notes on printed copies anyway.

Sometimes if I'm reviewing a longer piece, I prefer to print it out. I'll also do that sometimes if somone has posted something in a difficult to read font (size, color, or font face). Paper is still lighter than a laptop computer.