My first semester of middle school changed how I received this one thing that I have always had a problem accepting. That one thing is criticism.  Just like every other class, we had multiple essays to write throughout the year. If you know me well, I am not the best at writing long, descriptive pieces of writing that actually make sense. However, through all of the trial and error, and the grueling stretches of writing that I forced myself into to make a paper readable, I had an epiphany and because of it, the way I take criticism has changed drastically.

In August of 2012, I entered my first semester of 4th grade at Mary McArthur Elementary School in Fayetteville, North Carolina. A semester in which I started to write basic essays. When I first started to write my essay, the words were not coming to me like I wanted them to, but as time went by, I was thinking to myself “this essay is going to be the best paper to have ever been read, since Shakespeare.”  I was confident when I turned my paper in and I had the thought I was going to get an A. Unfortunately my thoughts did not become a reality.

When I got my paper back, my English teacher wrote so much on it, I thought she tried to write an essay of her own on top of mine. The paper was just filled with corrections and comments on the paper that were meant to help me, but instead left me disappointed in myself, but not hopeless, because I knew that this was only the first one and I knew I have more opportunities waiting in the future to step up my writing style. 

Later that year, we had another essay to do. I was focused on what I had to improve on. I put in even more thought into this essay that I did with my first one. When I was finished, I made sure that everything was perfect and I turned it in. When I got the paper back, the story was no different. There were still many recommendations and criticisms displayed on my paper. At this point I started to lose confidence and this is when I started to take criticism negatively. 

In the 5th grade I transferred to Leesville Road Elementary, a bigger school in Raleigh, North Carolina. This school was part of a bigger district and this district had even bigger expectations. Something told me I was going to get eaten alive by all of the comments I am anticipating. The crazy part was that I was not even in middle school yet.

Even though it has been only a year since I started to write, the expectations made me feel like I have jumped from the 4th grade to college level. I was so overwhelmed and my confidence dropped like a rock. I had a feeling that  when it comes to English, my talentless writing will hold me back. 

At this point, I had no clue what to do to improve my writing. I had lost all motivation to even attempt to come up with something. I knew that there was nothing I can do to write without the thought of being criticized, clouding my mind.

In 6th grade, things began to turn around for me. My first paper I did, there was not as much criticism as the previous papers, but I was still struggling with dealing with these comments. At this point, it was not about how many comments I had, it was about the fact that there were comments. Even if I only had one comment, I would get agitated. 

During the second paper in the 6th grade year. I was looking back at all of my previous essays and I thought “why were my teachers saying these things? I know they want their students to succeed but I feel like their comments are  taking away any motivation these students had/have.” 

Me saying this led me to having an epiphany. The comments that ranged from “You need to be more clear” to “take out this word” to “take out all of this” were not meant to hurt me or degrade me. Instead, these were meant to help me, and yet motivate me. 

The reason why this degraded me, was because I was not using the feedback correctly. I always saw it as a way to get under my skin and get me unmotivated. These teachers however, who have been saying these things since the 4th grade, want me to succeed and move on just as much if more than I wanted to, and I wanted to succeed so badly. 

Now that I had that realization, I started to think about how I could use these comments and turn them into something that I can use on my paper to make it something beautiful. I read the comments and I wrote down different ways I could say lines differently, as well as see what would happen if I did take some things out. 

When I started to do that, I felt it all coming together now. I felt like that these comments can be turned into something that I use to become stronger, and I felt stronger, and more confident in my writing.

When I finished my first paper doing that method, I finally got a grade on an essay that I was actually happy about. All it took was my stubbornness to get out of the way, and actually listen to what people say.

I have been keeping an average of all of my essay scores within the past 7 years. From 4th to 6th grade (pre-epiphany), I averaged 67% in 7 essays. The next 7, I averaged 89.6%. That is a 22.6% jump. If you told me that this would happen when I was in the 5th grade, I would have laughed and said “yeah, right”.

I went from being unmotivated to being confident and all it took was listening and using feedback as advice. I encourage everyone reading this, especially if you are struggling like I was, to listen and learn from that they say, because you can become someone, who you always wanted to be.