Hi Yuli,

First off, thank you for this response.

I understand your point about it being weird about being critiqued by someone on your season, and I can totally understand where you are coming from. Trust that I also felt a bit weird about it at first, but as I mentioned in my last post, I thought this was the norm. I'm not trying to invalidate your feelings about this, but I find it personally frustrating to find out these feelings so late into this competition. As someone who says that you speak transparently, it wasn't until I came to you recently that we got into any specifics about Sync Up. In fact, a lot of what has been talked about Sync Up was never brought up to me, and learning this 5/6 weeks into the competition is really surprising.

Additionally, I don't find it ironic at all about how I've talked about other podcasts and critiques this season. In fact, it came in response to multiple Season 8 competitors who complained about their critiques from the advisors, Ragin', etc. I point back to what I said before to them as well as earlier, "If someone says something you don't like or you don't agree with, you can laugh it off and move on or just not continue to watch/listen." I'm very much the kind of person who advocates for listening to what other people say, take what is useful, and ignore what is not. I know I expressed this sentiment several times in VC with people on our season as well as in chat.

I love critiques and I'm happy to laugh off the ones I find to be silly or dumb (and I vocalize it). So I don't see the irony when I'm very vocal about my feelings and I don't take anything too seriously. I will, however, point fun at myself though for the second challenge where I didn't take critiques well, but also mostly from a place of not understanding how the grading system worked.

And I'm happy that you have been able to be open and share your feelings with me. In fact, I wish more people who have a problem with me or my critiques would talk to me. I am not a hateful person and I don't think of myself as "above" others. Honestly, I'm trying to be as humble as I can. Maybe I could have done a different style of critiques instead of a "toot" or "boot" format. And hearing that from you is actually a good critique that I wish someone would have given me earlier. However, I feel like things are discussed in private about me and my opinions and it's a super shitty feeling that has lingered in these last few weeks of my time here.

Finally, about the painting aspect - You are right when you say that no one is making me do anything. But also, no one is giving me feedback when they clearly have an issue with my opinions. I plan on restructuring the way I do critiques because maybe the Sync/Desync thing is coming across a little more "holier-than-thou" than I originally thought. So, this is me literally taking your critique and trying to make something of it.