the student who already agrees with you

Every critique has one of these. You point out that the hierarchy is flat, that nothing on the page tells the eye where to land first, and before you finish the sentence they are nodding. Vigorously. "Yeah, no, totally, I knew that, I was actually going to fix that." They agreed with you before you had made an argument. This should feel like a win. It rarely does. I used to enjoy this student. Easy critique, no resistance, we could move on to the next project in half the time. It took me a while to notice that the work from this student changed less than anyone else's, despite the constant agreement, and eventually I understood why. Agreeing with a critique and absorbing it are two different acts, and the fast nod is usually a sign that the second one never happened.

The nod is not understanding. It is an exit strategy.

If you agree quickly enough, the conversation about your work gets to end, and you get to keep whatever private theory you already had about it. I once told a student her spacing was inconsistent across the layout. "Totally, yeah, I see it." Which line, I asked. She looked at the page for a genuinely long time and said, "The... second one?" It was not the second one. It was not any of the ones she then guessed. She had agreed with a criticism she had not yet located. I do not think this is dishonesty. I think it is a kind of social reflex, the same one that makes people say "that makes sense" in meetings about things that do not yet make sense to them, because disagreement costs time and social capital that agreement does not.

So now, when the nodding starts too early, I stop and ask them to point. Physically, on the page, to the exact thing we are discussing. It is a small, slightly unkind test, and it works better than any amount of explaining, because you cannot fake pointing at something you have not actually seen. Most students find the real problem eventually, usually a little embarrassed, usually somewhere they were not looking. That embarrassment is a better sign than the nod ever was. It means, for once, they were actually listening to the page instead of to me.