The rejection that made me look into self publishing

I first tried to get published when I was 19 years old, and nowhere near ready. I had a story that I thought was pretty good, but probably wasn't. I was taking writing classes and my teacher loved the story, but I didn't stop to think about whether or not other people would. I can still remember going to PJ's coffee and sending queries because I didn't have internet in my apartment at the time. I would go at least once a week to see if any of the agents had written back, and I'd end up querying more. I was determined, even though I had heard about the dreaded slush pile. One day I opened one of the rejections, surprised to find that the agent hadn't even bothered to use my name. The agent called me by my character's name. Had she even read the summary attached? I stared at the screen for a few minutes, dumbfounded. I knew a lot of rejections were copy and pasted from a template, but I never thought someone would confuse me with my MC. I was hurt and disgusted, so I deleted all the rejections from my email. I know a lot of authors keep the rejections, but I have always seen them as negative and I felt like a weight was lifted from my shoulders when I deleted them. I knew my work needed work, but I didn't want to put myself through the stress of querying again. I heard about self publishing about a year or so later, but it took me a long time before I attempted to publish anything. It took me a longer time to feel proud of the words I had written (which I do with The Fortune Teller's Gift).