I know this because I reread it four times that night, and every single time, my eyes slid past the praise like it was packaging and landed on the same four sentences like they were the only real thing in the document. Here’s the thing nobody says out loud: we spend eighteen-plus years in school and almost none of that time teaches us how to not let other people’s opinions, moods, or passing comments hijack our nervous system for days at a time. I think they’ve just quietly learned a skill the rest of us were never taught: how to hold their own opinion of themselves steady enough that it doesn’t get knocked over every time someone else has a passing thought about them.