Photography Class - Assignment 1

After a crazy school and work schedule last semester that left me stretched thin I decided to only enroll in one class. I registered for the photo 1 class. I took a photography class when I was at the U of U, but it has been a really long time since I used my film SLR or was in a darkroom so I was excited to take the class (Note: we won't be in the darkroom until after spring break, the first half we can use digital and if we shoot film we scan in our negatives.)
Our first assignment was to just take a roll of 36 exp film and get them developed. After getting our gear list I headed to Pictureline and asked them to get me the film I needed (my teacher has described it as chromogenic film which I think confused the store clerk). I walked out of the store and started shooting. We only had 2 days to shoot and get the film developed.
It was the night before class and I raced to Inkley's to have them develop my film only to discover I had purchased the wrong film. I had true negative film which is what is used in the darkroom. Inkely's would have to send the film to a lab and it would be 2 weeks before I would get it back. WHAT! It was due the next day. I had a small freak out then headed home to redo the assignment. Luckily, I had my friend Matt's Nikon D90 camera which he had loaned me to take photos of him proposing to his finance (YEAH Matt is engaged). So in only 45 minutes I took 36 photos of whatever I could find in my house, downloaded them to Walgreen's and was really annoyed at how boring my photos were.
The next day I picked up my prints and went to class. For critique we got in a groups of 4 people. We passed our prints to the right and the person next to us picked out their favorite 15 images from our rolls. Then those 15 images were passed again. The next person picked their favorite 10 of the 15. Again the prints were passed and cut down to the person's favorite 5 of the 10.
I actually really enjoyed this type of critique. Once complete we presented our best 5 to the class for open critique where people explained why they picked certain images. But what I didn't like were the images my group selected as my best images. I was really surprised by a terrible guitar photo they selected. There was nothing unique about the image nor was it shot well. So to appease my abhorrence at the selection I am presenting my favorites from this assignment.

My fellow classmates selected these as my best photos
 (my feet? you can tell I was  hurrying)

These are my favorites.

Now I wouldn't say that there wasn't some good thing about what they selected, but I found these second group of images more interesting. I like the blinds in the second group better because you could piece together some lights of the city. I loved the depth of field on the pears and I liked the angles of the lights.
What this critique demonstrated to me was the everyone has very different style and taste. But one of the things I really want to learn while in school is solid design principles so I can back up my opinions and be able to communicate powerful critiques based on design, not personal taste.
I am open to critique so leave a comment with your feedback.