When I turned 12 a shift operated in my school grades. I had started writing a lot and found math less fun. Literature teachers started to praise my writing skills. When I got to high school, I was lucky enough to have the BEST literature teacher in the whole school. I worshiped him. He was brilliant, cynical, political and passionate. My parents were worried about my maths grades but this literature teacher kept reassuring them, saying that I had a brilliant future ahead of me in his field. I hated school but I felt worthy of something so enjoyed his classes. Of course in France we praise talent more than effort and our school system is as crap as it gets. I thought I was entitled to something and it had to be perfect or not be. When we pass the "French" part of the Baccalauréat at 16 years old, we have 4 options. I ever only studied three of those options, the fourth one being Creative Writing, we were always told that unless we were Marcel Proust, none of us was worthy of taking that test. I got into University unprepared, on a misunderstanding, and started a Modern Literature degree. Teachers were brilliant. They kept telling us how our orthography wasn't good enough, how our writing was terrible and how grades in this field would never exceed 15 (they go up to 20 on paper), which would be extremely exceptional. No contemporary writer was worthy of our attention. The only female writer ever mentioned by male teachers was Marguerite Yourcenar. None of us should feel entitle to write. Everything had already been written. I got depressed and dropped uni. I haven't really written anything in a long time, whenever I start, I feel guilty and can only see my flaws. I just read that since 2012 some creative writing Masters have been created in a couple of french uni, a bit of hope? Roller Derby teaches me about learning. Try, try again, make mistakes, struggle, see progress in various forms, enjoy yourself. Maybe one day I'll feel that way towards writing?