Criticism

This week I worked on a poster that I have to make for a conference. I made my first draft and really didn't love it but it was as much as I could give at the moment. When my professor looked at it he gave me quite a few things to change and more advice then I really wanted to deal with at the moment. The next day I went back to it and changed it a lot. I didn't necessarily change it in the way he said but I addressed the issues his comments were about. For example he said I should create blocks around different subjects. I don't think that looks very nice and it wouldn't have worked very well with the images I already had. However, I made the flow a lot more clear, which is why he wanted me to change it in the first place.
I learned that technique from my Dad. He told us that when he was writing his dissertation his adviser kept rewriting sections of his work, and as his adviser was not a native english speaker they always sounded terrible. Finally, my Dad realized that he didn't need to write what his adviser said, he just needed to rewrite where his adviser said.
I've heard that the author Shannon Hale said something similar. When someone tells you to fix something they are almost always right, but how they say to fix it is almost always wrong. That you have to figure out yourself. Granted I think this works for more creative types of work...
I think overall I am pretty open to criticism and take it pretty well. However, it usually is easier to make the changes if I have given it a little time. It is really hard to suppress that first spark of hurt that comes... even when I didn't love it to begin with it and kind of agree with the criticism.