thanks - luckily I've been in a pretty self-confident space lately, so even though I am really hurt by what he says, especially since there is a grain of truth in it (I was a child of the public school system, I haven't been making rapid progress in Uzbek this year, and one of my regrets about my trip to Uzbekistan is that I relied so heavily on my Russian instead of forcing myself to speak more Uzbek). Regardless, I am confident in the fact that I belong in the academy and am confident that I am on the right path for myself and that I'm slowly progressing toward my goals. So while his comments sting a lot, they haven't thrown me into too dark and scary a place - I'm just really thrown because he has been so supportive of me in the past.