Is this thing on?

So, I had my TV class last night. It's good, it gets my brain working, even at 7 PM. Trying to think of clever plot points is very difficult when you close in on 10 PM, but my instructor's insistence on juice and cookies does help us get through the midway point in the class and down the home stretch.

There are 20 people in the class, so it can get exhausting listening to everyone pitch their stories and the rest of the class dissecting it, trying to find what will make the story really intriguing or at least workable. Fortunately, we'll be splitting into discussion groups in the next week or two so I'll only have to focus on maybe four or five other stories instead of 20.

But, it was weird last night. I felt like I was talking to myself a lot. When I was in the UCLA Professional Program last year, it was not only commonplace, but required that you get involved in other people's projects, help throw out suggestions and ideas. Most of the people in the room last night have either written very little or no scripts at all, and as I threw out ideas to people about their stories or posed dilemmas or questions about what they had pitched, I felt the silence in the room as if people were thinking "who is this FREAK who thinks she has all these wonderful ideas? How DARE she criticize my story or suggest something completely off base from my idea?" I'm certainly not trying to best someone's ideas, but the whole point of these classes is that you throw out an idea, and maybe someone builds on your suggestion or finds another way to take it, which is even better. You WANT someone to come up with a better idea than you did. Still, I couldn't help feeling I had a huge target on my chest and I should really just shut up.

Am I wrong to try to help people? Am I being too pushy? I just don't know.