The journalism school I went to accepted 120 high school graduates out of thousands of applicants. If you got in, you were probably at the top of your high school English classes and you probably thought you were hot shit.
There was a rude awakening coming, and woe to those who were not prepared. They told us early on that we would be graded more harshly and critiqued more sharply than we were probably accustomed to. It was nonetheless a shock to some people's systems.
I had my own internal struggles with journalism school, but I didn't go in with a false, inflated sense of superiority because a year earlier, I had signed up for a writing website that I didn't quite understand, posted some things that weren't up to par, and gotten a stern lecture from some guy I didn't know who apparently took the place really seriously.
I won't lie: I stayed here partially out of spite. Quitting would have been too simple; I wanted to get it and I was going to wear him (among others) down. I asked him to take a look at a subsequent writeup (long since nuked at my own request). He told me that the content was fine this time, though "it rambles a bit and fails to establish a solid point." I got better. He was encouraging — blunt and honest, but encouraging.
We had many, many conversations about music over the next couple of years. (Consider that when I secured tickets to a concert I'd been hoping for forever, the first person I excitedly told was a man 1,700 km away whom I'd never met and would never meet.)
He was the first god who threw some extra votes my way as a reward for a solid effort and he was generous with his C!s, but he was usually the first person to tell me that I'd phrased something awkwardly or made a typo or could stand to clarify something (or had neglected to mention Matt Drudge in a writeup about online journalism, but I stand by that one).
He took my writing seriously enough to tell me when it needed work, and I'll always be grateful. The best people never stop expecting the best of you and call you out on it when you slack.
I hope this was neither rambling nor lacking a solid point. I can't presume to guess what he'd think about the content, but I mean it. Every word. Thank you, sir.