I have, for as long as I have known how to hold a pencil, considered myself a writer. As a child, I kept journals and wrote pseudo “novels.” English was my favorite class—the only one I actually looked forward to. Needless to say, writing was at the core of my being. I was good at it, and no one questioned that …

… until one day when I was 18. I was a freshman in college and enrolled in, what appeared to me as, a fluke of an writing class. I hated the professor; she seemed incompetent, and let’s just face it, she was mean. I loathed her assignments but usually excelled in them. Everything was fine, until one fateful spring afternoon. It was a Friday, and I was eager to find out what I scored on an assigned article. It wasn’t a topic I particularly liked but one in which I thought I did well. So, you can imagine that I, the student that always did well and prided herself in writing, was shocked when I discovered I got less than a stellar grade, along with a note that read “Are you sure you want to be a journalist?” I couldn’t believe it. I walked the half a mile from her classroom to my dorm room, fists clenched, face red, body tense. As soon as I got back to my dorm room, I examined the article. There it was, this brilliant piece of word art (or so I thought), saturated with her violent red pen marks: misuse of a comma here, wrong descriptive phrase there, unnecessary paragraph over here, extraneous verbiage over there—the list went on and on. I must admit I felt like Ralphie on “The Christmas Story.” He was so eager to turn in that paper, proud of what he had written and so disappointed when he got it back. I started crying, cussing, yelling and even stomping. Yes, I stomped. My behavior immediately reverted to that of a 4 year old, and I had a pretty self-indulgent temper tantrum. And after I calmed down, I did what any logical, passionate, aspiring journalist would do: I called my professor and asked her to sit down with me and explain my errors. Don’t get me wrong, her condescending remarks were a big slap in the face, but I was determined to find out where I went wrong. 

When I met with her a few days later, she admitted the journalist comment was uncalled for, but she stuck to her guns in shredding my article apart. It was a tough pill to swallow, to say the least, but in hindsight, I really appreciate that day. It was the first time I was surged into the real world of writers. I experienced what every writer experiences: those horrific moments of rejection, or worse, failure. Writers can be prideful, yes, but there will always be an editor that is going to rip your words apart. And there will always be that one you never forget, that one editor that really gets under your skin until the epic “aha” moment when you realize that she was actually right.

You see, this is how mediocre writers become great writers. It usually takes someone to point out your flaws before you can fix them. Sometimes, it’s from a respected editor and you professionally say “thank you” and comply. And then sometimes it’s from a callous professor, and you shamefully channel the outbursts of a toddler. Eventually though, you learn to take these moments of rejection with a grain of salt and move on. As a writer, we have no choice but to build some pretty thick skin.

I’ve worked for various magazines since then, and every time I edit someone’s feature story—or better yet, have someone edit mine—I am always grateful for that horrible, albeit beneficial, day.