This Dress Make Me Look Fat?

I got to wondering the other day about the time I've spent on screenwriting boards. Was it worth it? What did I learn? How many stupid questions and arrogant posts have I written? How many times have I humiliated myself in public? So, I started researching and ran across a post on Wordplay from over a year ago. Here's an excerpt.
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WARNING: Long post, short point.

A few years ago, I had written a speech for a particularly high profile press conference when I was suddenly attacked by an out-of-character-for-me case of nerves. The press room was already crammed with cameras when I begged a colleague to look over my speech. I stood by and studied his slash marks as his pen committed suicide on my pages. He ranted things at me like, "what the hell is this?" and "who gives a damn about that?" among other expletives so brutal, they pain the human ear. Halfway through the speech, he shoved the ink-bloodied pages at me and told me to polish up my resume. I thanked him as he blew out of the room. He could be heard down the hall still ranting, calling me a hack, and accusing me of exploiting my job to promote my own political agenda.

Another director, who had overheard the whole thing, asked why I didn't break the guy's jaw for berating me like that. Because, I calmly told him, he gave me exactly what I asked for: his honest opinion. If he had glanced at it and handed it back with a casual, "looks fine to me", I'd have been ticked off. Instead, he told me exactly what was broken, but not how to fix it.

I rushed to my office, made extensive rewrites and called (note to reader: insert name of any important person here cuz I'm not telling) to report that I had some edits in his speech. We went over the revisions and he concluded the briefing by telling me it was the best thing I'd ever written for him.

That colleague did me an enormous favor. I respect him for having the intestinal fortitude to tell me it wasn't good enough and for getting angry. He knew what I was capable of. That speech wasn't it! If I were honest with myself, I would probably admit that my nerves that day were nothing more than a manifestation of my own knowledge that I'd done a sorry job.