While students are certainly allowed to use the lesson material in whatever way they see fit to try and study and improve their skills, we certainly do stress the importance of "not working in a vacuum" and have developed the various methods for submitting work for feedback for a reason. Students simply aren't well equipped - especially when it comes to those at the very beginning, and those dealing with the fundamentals - to understand for themselves what they should be paying more attention to, and what is a perfectly normal area to struggle in. Those that rely only on their own judgment - mind you, judgment that is not based on experience, skill, or really any kind of knowledge that we can reasonably expect them to have - are more prone to getting caught up grinding on things that are of far less significance, and ignoring things that they might want to address right now to avoid problems later on.

Ultimately when it comes to community critique, while the unofficial Critique Exchange program being run on the discord certainly helps students receive more reliable feedback in more reasonable timeframes, it's still far from guaranteed - so there are definitely situations where people who can't afford official critique aren't for whatever reason getting any free feedback, and thus end up having to decide to continue on of their own volition. That's understandable, as long as the effort has been put in to seek out feedback in the first place.