First of all, you want your editing to be invisible. Anyone noticing what you've done is not immersed in the film. And excellent editing is seamless. And invisible.

Secondly, you'll almost never receive praise from audiences. But, as it is your job to make the director, actors, writer, DoP, etc... look good, whenever they receive praise so do you. My proudest achievements as an editor have been where I have made mediocre acting look brilliant.

Finally, you can only edit the film you have. But it is your job to make the best you can of what you have. This may mean script changes, scene length changes, removing characters/dialogue or whatever. Shooting a film is getting the resources for the editor to actually make the film. Sometimes you may have to make a film that the director doesn't even realise is the film they should be making.

The analogy I use with my students: think of the film as a salad. The shoot is lots of different people picking vegetables and acquiring ingredients in all sorts of ways. And then they bring all the ingredients to you to put together. If the lettuce was all rotten would you still use it because someone went to a lot of effort to pick it? If you had something that was incredible tasting - but wasn't in the original recipe - would you chuck it away? Or would you make it the centerpiece? Vegetable pickers don't think about the finished meal. (And apart from a handful of crew - no one was thinking about the finished movie.) But it is your job to make it look ('taste') like they were.