writer's remorse?

This has to be quick, I have a lot I still have to finish up tonight for other classes (reading articles and writing a paper on the causes of poverty from a source that doesn't even know what the causes of poverty are).

Anyways...

Throughout most of last week I was doubting myself. That big 18 page paper I wrote for one of my classes, I got the grades back on it and it was far lower than I expected it to be (it was a B-, and I was like WTF?) especially since upon completion I thought it was one of the best/most important things I had ever written. For the whole week I wasn't able to talk with my professor about it so for the whole week I was doubting my ability as a writer. Going into the paper I told myself, "I am going to write this my way and the way I want. I am going talk about what I want and I have enough faith in my writing ability that this will get me a good grade on this paper." A B- is not a good grade. Well at least not on something like this.

So on Thursday I was able to talk with my professor and right when I mentioned that I wrote 18 pages, 4 more than the required 14, he knew something was off. He went back and looked at my paper and his spreadsheet of the grades and both confirmed that a mistake had taken place. He told me that he remembered reading it and that he really enjoyed it. He also said that he believed I had a "real gift for writing" (even though it may not be showing here in this post). We continued this conversation about my plans of writing and acting for about 20 more minutes and it felt really good to just talk to someone about it all. It felt even better when I found out that I should not have been doubting myself (I tend to do this a lot; refer back to "not the one step forward I needed, but the one that will take me farther" post).

I could write more about this event (and I believe it will definitely be expanded upon further in another form of writing) but I must end this here and now by saying simply thank you to my professor. Thank you for making that slight error in grading, because if you hadn't I do not know if I ever would have gotten the privilege of having that conversation with you.

So thank you.