Feelings, nothing more than feelings

Once in awhile, a student does or says something that just flat-out hurts my feelings. Like this:

The primary concern is that most of my friends have consistently told me how terrible and brutally hard this class was. ..... My other only concern is how my friends who have had you previously haven’t liked you.

This, in a student's introduction letter.  After two days of class in which I assure the kids that yes, my class is hard (what would be the purpose of lying to them?  I think some of my tendency to sugar-coat is what kept kids who didn't feel like doing the work from switching out last quarter), but that I will do my best to help them succeed if they put the work in.

After reading that essay last night, I nearly cried.  Then I felt stupid for letting it get to me.  I finally got to talk to my friend-friend after school today, and she was totally getting how I felt.  And she told me she would have cried, which made me feel less stupid.  All this following some mean-spirited vandalism on the last day of second quarter is making me blue.