Taking Criticism

A short essay called Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, tells us about a forty-one year old man who moves to Paris with hopes of learning French. Even though he has a very anal teacher who is always attacking the student for his French, at the end of the essay he finally understands the language. On many occasions, I have seen that many professors seem to be harsh, in order for the students to learn, which is reflected in the short story.
I can relate to David’s situation because I too have had a teacher who criticized my opinion. An example would be my senior year in high school, Mrs.Ellingsen, my AVID teacher and mentor, had always pushed me in my academics. She would check my schedule and make sure my courses were rigorous and would look good on my high school transcript. If she didn’t think the course was challenging enough, she would tell me to change the class. One day, I decided to drop my AP English course and take regular English. According to Mrs.Ellingsen, that was the biggest mistake I could have made. Mrs.Ellingsen told me the harshest things. Things such as, "if you can’t even do AP English then how are you going to make it through college?" She also told me that she would not support me in my decision. When she told me this it made me feel like a failure, she even made me cry that day. After feeling depressed I decided to adhere to my decision to drop AP English and take an English Course. Just as David learned to speak French in spite of being criticized every day, I learned to do what benefits me, even though other don’t agree.
Even though the message of this book was hard to get at the first reading, overall the essay in my opinion was about taking criticism and learning to grow from it. People aren’t just harsh to you for the fun of it but to make you better. When you have a harsh professor just remember that they are harsh to improve your skills, as was David’s French professor did. But count yourself fortunate to have someone who cares about you.