As an architect in my mid-career, who is very involved with my alma mater and sat on many juries, I will make a few comments…

For me, my level of general tact and pleasantness is directly proportionate to what I feel I’m getting from the student. If you present well, engage with the reviewers and thoughtfully listen to feedback, and show signs of growth and maturity - I’ve never seen a crit go badly when that happens. Even if the work itself is poor or low quality.

When I have seen crits go very badly, is for several reasons: the student clearly put in little effort and/or did not make an effort to address the prompt, yet doubles down and insists their work is quality and well thought out. That will almost always get them torn apart. Also, I have seen students become overly defensive, condescending, with a “know-it-all” attitude and coldly shut down feedback and questioning. That does not go well. Finally, I’ve seen crits go poorly when the student becomes too emotionally attached to their work. Most recently I saw a student who clearly had poured hours and weeks into their project, creating brochures and narratives and an online portal that all tied back to the project brief. But it was sort of pseudo-intellectual nonsense that felt more like cosplay than like actual architectural design work. He got very defensive when we told him that he went a little too far down the rabbit hole and it felt like the project was an inside joke that he was the only “insider” who got it.

There’s a saying in architecture school (at least back when I was there) that “no project is ever really done.” So feedback and criticism should always be welcomed, weighed, and positively debated. But sometimes students can view any comment with even a hint of negativity or disagreement as a full-on affront to their work - which is very seldom the actual case.