Quieting The Inner Critic

With advice from Tan France. Plus, a satire about modern academia.

Remember Honesty Box? That brutal Facebook app that allowed people to leave their opinions about you anonymously. Most of the time, friends filled them with compliments to one another, but for insecure teens, it was a nightmare; a prime opportunity to bully others without consequence. I remember many tears came from reading the mean comments I received—from something as silly as the shirt I’d worn that day to more substantial attacks on my personality, every kind of criticism took me down.

Thankfully, we’ve come a long way since then. That is one of the benefits of getting older—you start to care less what people think. Armed with a stronger sense of self, it’s a lot easier to brush criticism off my shoulders now. Or so I thought.