I think I just found the ending to my Juilliard Story
This is a passage from Free For All--the story of Joe Papp and the creation of The Public Theater (i.e. my favorite theater in New York). Joe Papp had just put up his first theatrical venture in New York: a performance of three Sean O'Casey plays that he both co-produced (with another New York theater giant who was then a nobody: Bernie Gersten) and directed. Uninvited, Brooks Akinson, lead New York Times critic, showed up to a dress rehearsal, posting a scathing review the next morning, in which he suggested that Papp had no talent, no skill, no business doing theater and should get out of the business immediately. For everyone's sake. This is what Papp writes in Free For All:
I read the review in the morning, and I began to walk around Central Park. It was a pleasant day, but the park wasn't very crowded so I sat on a bench, listened to the birds twitter, and thought, "Maybe I should do something else." And then, "But what do I know?" My qualifications were non-existent. I didn't know anything else; theater was something I thought I knew. But Atkinson was telling me I didn't know that, either. He was saying, "Who is this person who did this?"
I had made what i felt was such a strong effort. Everything I'd done had led up to those plays, everything was riding on them. What if they really were that bad? Having your name in the Times, being told you're not good, that you should get out of theater--it was one of the lowest points in my life. But I didn't give up. What would I give up to? How do you give up? I don't know how. What do you do, drown yourself? The only way to give up is to commit suicide, and I'm not in that vein.