Thanks Group

I really want to thank my workshop group. I was so very nervous about work-shopping my story. I worried that everyone would hate it. Reading some of the products from my classmates only increased my fears. There are some truly exceptional writers in my group and I was incredibly intimidated. I want to be an author more than almost anything else and I saw their great potential dwarf my own.
But in the end I was afraid for no reason. Far from telling me I'm amazing (which I would never have believed even for a glorious moment) my group told me that there was potential. They liked what I had written and they offered the kind of constructive criticism I sorely needed.
When I work-shopped papers in high school I was always in a group with people I had known for literally all of my life. They all knew my goals and not one of them would have ever told me I couldn't achieve them. The problem was that they then didn't give me constructive feedback. For a while I was proud. In a very small school I was one of the best writers and it certainly went to my head.
Coming to SLU where the size of my class is bigger than my high school and middle school combined, woke me up to the realization that I'm not so great. For the first time I questioned my dreams. I managed to make the transition to writing college level papers without a hitch. But I was afraid of sharing my creative writing within the college sphere. I was terrified that the one thing I love most would be torn to shreds so small they couldn't be used to light a fire.
As I said before, I didn't need to be so afraid. I know I have a long way to go, but after today, I'm pretty sure I can make it. Thank you.