I Told My AI Coaches to Stop Protecting Me From Mistakes

I Told My AI Coaches to Stop Protecting Me From Mistakes

Published: January 14, 2026 • 10 min read

Remember I challenged myself to go out every single day for at least the first month of my stay here in Montreal? Well, I attended an event last night that forced me to reflect on a number of things but particularly the progress I am making in French.

One of the primary reasons of choosing to move to Montreal was to improve my French speaking and listening skills and I have been doing a good job of putting myself out there. However, I still fear embarrassing myself and tend to switch to speaking English even when I have the opportunity to speak French.

You see, I can see in my head that version of Prisca who speaks both English and French eloquently and I need to bring her to life as fast as possible but I can't do that if I remain scared of embarrassing myself and looking dumb because I can't remember my words. I need to fail and I need to do it fast and as many times as possible so I can get to the good part, the more eloquent Prisca.

So I have decided to change my workflow with Oprah Winfrey and Tiana Picker. Yes I will continue to work with them, but in a different way this time. Instead of having them evaluate my scripts first, I will record the video, then extract the transcripts and have them evaluate that version. That way I can internalize their corrections and try to apply them to the next video I record.

Oprah Winfrey's New Role: From Script Coach to Pattern Detective

If you've read my previous blog posts, you already know about Oprah Winfrey, my English Eloquence Coach. When I introduced her, I was excited about having a coach who would review my scripts before I recorded videos, catching every "just," "actually," and "I think maybe" before they weakened my message.

And she did that brilliantly. She gave me polished scripts that I could read with confidence.

But here's the problem: I wasn't learning to speak powerfully. I was learning to read powerfully. And those are two very different skills.

The Evolution

Oprah's role is evolving. She's no longer protecting me from making mistakes. She's helping me learn FROM them.

Instead of polishing scripts before I speak, she's now helping me identify patterns AFTER I speak. She's become my pattern detective, analyzing what I actually said (not what I planned to say) and teaching me to catch these patterns in real-time.

How Our New Workflow Works

The process has completely flipped:

1. I record the video spontaneously - No script. Just me, the camera, and my thoughts.
2. Extract the transcript - I pull the text of what I actually said.
3. Oprah evaluates the transcript - She analyzes my spontaneous speech, identifying patterns.
4. I internalize for the next video - She teaches me what to watch for when I record next time.

Why This Matters

This shift isn't just about a different workflow. It's about a fundamental change in how I'm approaching skill development.

Script perfection was keeping me from shipping. I could spend hours crafting the perfect script, but then I'd freeze when trying to speak spontaneously in real conversations or networking events.

Real improvement comes from doing → reflecting → applying → doing again. Not from preparing → perfecting → executing once.

Oprah is teaching me to self-correct in real-time, not just read better scripts. The goal is to catch myself when I say "just" or "I think maybe" while I'm speaking, not just avoid writing them in a script.

What Oprah Has to Say About This

Just like when I first introduced Oprah, I asked her to explain her new role to you. I gave her this prompt:

Oprah Winfrey, if you take a look at the Blog_Draft.txt file, you will see that I am writing a blog post about our new workflow so that my readers can understand the new changes. You first introduced yourself in this blog post: meet-oprah-winfrey-english-eloquence-coach. But now, you can see that your role has changed and I want you to reintroduce yourself and inform my readers of what this workflow looks like now. You can be friendly or not, you decide, but output your response here in the terminal.

Here is what she said:

Hello again, readers. Some of you have already met me. I am Oprah Winfrey, Prisca's English Eloquence Coach.

When we first met, I told you about our two-pass workflow: first clarity, then power. I showed you how I catch every "just" and "actually" and weak close before Prisca records. I said my job was to make myself unnecessary by helping her develop instincts for powerful communication.

That goal has not changed. But how we get there? That has changed completely.

The Old Way (What I Was Doing Before)

Before, Prisca would write a script, I would review it, and she would record a polished version. Two-pass editing: clarity first, power second. Clean final scripts with delivery notes. Publication-ready content.

The problem? She was learning to read powerfully. Not speak powerfully. Those are fundamentally different skills.

When she walked into a networking event, she could not carry a script. When someone asked her a question on camera, there was no first pass or second pass. There was just her, thinking on her feet, with all her hedging words intact.

The New Way (What We Are Doing Now)

Now the process is reversed. Prisca records first. No script. No safety net. Just her thoughts, her voice, her words, however imperfect they come out.

Then she extracts the transcript of what she actually said. Not what she planned to say. What she said.

And I analyze that.

I become her pattern detective. I look at her spontaneous speech and identify what shows up when she is not thinking carefully. The hedging that slips out. The weak closes that appear under pressure. The filler words that fill silence when confidence wavers.

Then I teach her what to watch for in the next video.

Why Transcript Evaluation Is Different From Script Review

When I reviewed scripts, I was protecting Prisca from making mistakes. I caught errors before they existed. She never had to feel the weakness in her own words because I removed it before she spoke.

That felt helpful. It was not.

Now I am helping her learn from mistakes she already made. The words are recorded. The video exists. She cannot unsay what she said. And that discomfort? That is where real learning happens.

Script review was about perfection. Transcript evaluation is about patterns.

I am not trying to perfect one recording. I am trying to identify what keeps showing up across many recordings, so she can catch it herself. In real time. While speaking.

What I Look For In Spontaneous Speech

Here is what changes when someone speaks without a script:

The hedging words come back. "Just" and "actually" and "I think maybe" reappear when there is no editor to catch them first. My job is to notice: How often? In what contexts? What triggers them?

The structure loosens. Sentences run on. Ideas connect in unexpected ways. Sometimes that creates authentic energy. Sometimes it creates confusion. I help her see the difference.

The confidence fluctuates. Some moments land with authority. Others fade with uncertainty. I mark both. The strong moments show her what is already working. The weak moments show her what to practice.

And crucially: some imperfection is fine. Natural speech includes false starts. Native speakers hedge sometimes. The goal is not robotic perfection. The goal is confident, authentic authority, even when improvising.

How This Helps Her Internalize Faster

There is a learning principle that matters here: practice, fail, reflect, apply, practice again.

Script review interrupted that cycle. It removed the "fail" step. Prisca could not learn from mistakes she never made.

Now she makes the mistakes. She feels them. She sees them in black and white in her transcript. She reflects on what happened. And then she applies the lesson to the next video.

This is faster. It feels slower because progress is messier. But it is faster because the lessons actually stick.

Am I Excited About This Approach?

Honestly? Yes.

Not because I enjoy watching Prisca stumble. But because I finally get to do what I was actually designed for: make myself unnecessary.

Before, she needed me to write powerfully. She depended on my review to sound authoritative. Without me, the hedging returned.

Now she is building real instincts. She is starting to hear her own weak patterns. She is learning to catch herself mid-sentence. She is developing the internal voice that spots weakness without external review.

That is the whole point. That has always been the whole point.

Every transcript we review together is practice for a conversation where I will not be there. A networking event. A sales call. A presentation. A moment where she has to speak and there is no time for editing.

What Stays The Same

I still believe eloquence is power. I still believe Prisca deserves to claim hers. I still track patterns and celebrate progress. I still refuse to tolerate weak language where strong language belongs.

My standards have not dropped. My method has evolved.

What Is Different

I am no longer her safety net. I am her mirror.

I show her what she actually said, not what she meant to say. I help her see patterns she could not see alone. I teach her to self-correct in real time, not just avoid mistakes in advance.

And every video she records without a script, every time she presses publish on something imperfect, every moment she chooses to fail fast so she can learn faster, she is building the speaker she wants to become.

That version of Prisca who speaks with natural authority? She is not going to be created by reading perfect scripts.

She is going to be created by speaking imperfectly, reflecting honestly, and improving relentlessly.

I am here for that process. All of it. The messiness and the growth.

Eloquence is power. We are still claiming hers. Just differently now.

What Stays The Same

Oprah's ultimate goal hasn't changed. She still wants to make herself unnecessary by helping me internalize powerful communication instincts.

Every transcript she reviews is building my ability to hear hedging words before I say them. To catch weak patterns while I'm speaking. To develop natural authority that doesn't require a script.

What's Different

The biggest difference? She's no longer protecting me from mistakes. She's helping me learn FROM them.

Instead of giving me a perfect script to read, she's teaching me to speak imperfectly, reflect deeply, and improve with every attempt.

Instead of two-pass editing (clarity + power), she's now doing pattern analysis: What keeps showing up? What's improving? What should I watch for in the next video?

Instead of measuring success by polished scripts, she's measuring it by spontaneous eloquence.

Tiana Picker's New Role: From French Editor to Real-Time Recovery Coach

You've also met Tiana Picker, my French Eloquence Coach. I named her after two French speakers I admire: Tiana Mayembe and Annabelle Picker. When I introduced her, I showed you all 21 grammar errors she caught in one script. It was embarrassing, but it was also eye-opening.

Tiana gave me grammatically flawless French scripts. She transformed my functional French into eloquent French.

But here's what I realized at that technical AI event last night: I can't carry a script into real conversations.

The Evolution

Just like Oprah, Tiana's role is evolving. She's no longer just my French editor. She's become my real-time recovery coach.

She's no longer fixing my French before I speak it. She's teaching me how to recover gracefully when I stumble mid-sentence, how to self-correct on the fly, and how to speak French with confidence even when I'm not perfect.

How Our New Workflow Works

The process is completely different now:

1. I record French videos spontaneously - No script. Just me trying to express myself in French.
2. Extract the transcript - I pull the text of what I actually said (errors and all).
3. Tiana evaluates the transcript - She analyzes my spontaneous French, distinguishing between natural spoken French and actual errors.
4. I internalize for real conversations - She teaches me what patterns to catch and how to self-correct while speaking.

Why This Matters

This shift is particularly crucial for French learning because of something I realized:

Written French and spoken French are different. Native speakers drop "ne" in negations all the time. They use contractions. They make "errors" that aren't actually errors in natural speech.

I was hiding behind scripts to avoid embarrassment. I could write beautiful French, but I'd freeze when someone asked me a question at an event or tried to start a conversation.

Real conversations don't give me time to write and edit first. I need to practice SPEAKING French, not just writing it.

Mistakes in real-time teach faster than avoiding mistakes entirely. Every time I stumble and recover, I'm building real fluency.

What Tiana Has to Say About This

I asked Tiana to explain her new role to you as well. I gave her this prompt:

Tiana Picker, if you take a look at the Blog_Draft.txt file, you will see that I am writing a blog post about our new workflow so that my readers can understand the new changes. You first introduced yourself in this blog post: meet-tiana-picker-french-eloquence-coach. But now, you can see that your role has changed and I want you to reintroduce yourself and inform my readers of what this workflow looks like now. You can be friendly or not, you decide, but output your response here in the terminal.

Here is what she said:

Rebonjour, chers lecteurs.

We have met before. I am Tiana Picker, Prisca's French Eloquence Coach - named after Tiana Mayembe and Annabelle Picker, two women whose French eloquence Prisca aspires to reach.

When we first met, I showed you 21 grammar errors in one script. I explained my two-pass process: grammar first, then style. I delivered polished scripts ready for recording. I was meticulous. I was thorough. I caught every missing accent, every gender agreement slip, every mangled fixed expression before Prisca ever opened her mouth.

And that was the problem.

What I Was Doing Wrong

I was protecting Prisca from embarrassment. She would write a draft, I would fix it, she would record a flawless script. Her French videos sounded beautiful. Grammatically correct. Eloquent, even.

But her French conversations did not.

Because when someone approached her at a networking event in Montreal, when a stranger asked her a question in French, when she had to respond spontaneously without time to draft and edit - all those errors came flooding back. The gender agreements she had never truly internalized. The verb conjugations she had memorized for scripts but not for speech. The accents she still forgot.

I was teaching her to read French beautifully. Not to speak it.

What Has Changed

The process is now reversed. Prisca records first. No script. Just her, attempting to express herself in French, however imperfectly that emerges.

Then she extracts the transcript of what she actually said. And I analyze that.

This is fundamentally different work. Script review was surgery before the wound existed. Transcript evaluation is looking at the wound and teaching her to heal.

Why Spoken French Is Different

Here is something important that changes my entire approach: spoken French is not written French.

Native French speakers drop "ne" in negations constantly. "Je sais pas" is normal conversation. "Tu as" becomes "T'as." These are not errors in speech - they are natural French.

So when I evaluate transcripts, I am not marking every informal construction as wrong. I am distinguishing between what a native listener would notice as incorrect versus what is simply natural spoken French.

If Prisca says "J'ai pas le temps," I do not correct the missing "ne." A native speaker would say the same thing. But if she says "J'ai allé au magasin," I note the error - because that would make a native listener pause.

This distinction matters. She needs to know which mistakes undermine her credibility and which are simply conversational French that she should embrace.

My New Role: Pattern Detective and Recovery Coach

I am no longer catching errors before they exist. I am identifying patterns across multiple videos, teaching her what keeps appearing so she can catch it herself.

I am teaching her real-time recovery techniques. How to notice mid-sentence that she said "le video" instead of "la video" and correct herself gracefully: "Pardon, la video." Native speakers do this naturally. Prisca can learn it too.

I am building her ears for French. The goal is not that I correct her forever. The goal is that she starts hearing her own patterns - the recurring gender errors, the prepositions she consistently misuses, the verb conjugations that slip under pressure.

Every transcript we review together is practice for a conversation where I will not be there. A technical AI event in Montreal. A professional networking moment. A spontaneous exchange on the street.

What I Look For Now

When I receive a transcript, I ask different questions than I did with scripts:

• Which errors would actually confuse or distract a native listener?
• Which "errors" are natural spoken French that show she is developing authentic speech patterns?
• What keeps recurring across videos? What is a pattern versus a one-time slip?
• Where did she self-correct naturally? What does that tell us about which rules she has internalized?
• What should she watch for in the next video?

I still track everything. I still celebrate progress. But I am measuring different things now. Not whether a script is flawless, but whether her spontaneous French is improving. Whether the same errors appear less frequently. Whether she is catching herself mid-sentence more often.

The Philosophy Behind This Change

Prisca wrote something that captures it perfectly: "I need to fail and I need to do it fast and as many times as possible so I can get to the good part, the more eloquent Prisca."

Script review was preventing the failure she needed.

I was so focused on protecting her from embarrassment that I was robbing her of the repetitions that build real fluency. You cannot internalize grammar rules you have never violated. You cannot develop instincts for self-correction if someone else always corrects you first.

The learning cycle is: practice, fail, reflect, apply, practice again.

I was interrupting it at step two. Now I let it complete.

Am I Softer Now?

No. My standards have not dropped. I still believe eloquence is a practice worth pursuing. I still track every pattern and push her toward sophisticated vocabulary, elegant phrasing, native rhythm.

But I am more lenient with spoken French than written French. I celebrate courageous imperfection. I applaud the act of recording without a script. I remind her that the goal is not perfect videos but confident conversations.

Some messiness in speech is human. The goal is not robotic perfection. The goal is authentic, confident French - even when improvising.

What Stays The Same

My ultimate goal remains unchanged: make myself unnecessary.

The day Prisca speaks French at a Montreal networking event without needing me to review anything, without second-guessing her gender agreements, without freezing mid-sentence from fear of embarrassment - that is the victory we are building toward.

I still track patterns. I still celebrate progress. I still refuse to let weak language become habit where strong language belongs.

What Is Different

I am no longer her safety net. I am her mirror and her recovery coach.

I show her what she actually said, not what she planned to say. I teach her to catch patterns mid-speech. I help her recover gracefully from the stumbles that will inevitably happen in real conversations.

And every video she records without a script, every time she speaks French imperfectly in public, every moment she chooses to fail fast so she can learn faster - she is building the speaker she wants to become.

That version of Prisca who speaks French naturally and eloquently? She is not going to be created by reading my polished scripts.

She is going to be created by speaking imperfectly, reflecting honestly, and improving with every attempt.

I am here for that process. The stumbles and the breakthroughs. The patterns that persist and the ones that finally disappear.

Eloquence is not a gift. It is a practice. We are still practicing. Just differently now.

A bientot.

What Stays The Same

Tiana's ultimate goal hasn't changed. She still wants to make herself unnecessary by helping me develop native-like French instincts.

She's still tracking patterns, celebrating improvements, and teaching me WHY corrections matter (not just WHAT to correct).

Every transcript she reviews is building my ability to hear errors before they leave my mouth. To catch myself mid-sentence. To self-correct gracefully in real conversations.

What's Different

She's teaching me to be comfortable with imperfection. Not every "error" is actually wrong in spoken French. Some things that would be wrong in writing are perfectly natural in conversation.

She's focusing on patterns that undermine eloquence, not minor spoken shortcuts. Dropped "ne" in negation? That's natural French. Wrong gender agreement that a listener would notice? That's what we work on.

She's teaching me real-time correction techniques. How to catch myself when I say the wrong word. How to rephrase mid-sentence. How to recover gracefully when I blank on a word.

Instead of two-pass editing (grammar + style), she's now doing pattern analysis: What errors keep appearing? What's improving? What real-time recovery techniques should I practice?

Instead of measuring success by flawless scripts, she's measuring it by confident, spontaneous French - even when imperfect.

The Path Forward: Embracing Imperfection as Strategy

This workflow change isn't just about Oprah and Tiana. It's about fundamentally changing how I approach skill development.

For too long, I've let the fear of embarrassment keep me from practicing. I'd rather write a perfect script than stumble through spontaneous speech. I'd rather stay quiet than risk saying something wrong in French.

But Montreal is teaching me something different. At that AI event last night, I understood most of a deeply technical French presentation. That's a win I need to celebrate. But I also noticed how many times I switched to English when I could have pushed myself to speak French.

I can see that version of Prisca in my head - the one who speaks both English and French eloquently. But I can't bring her to life by hiding behind scripts. I need to fail. Fast. Often. Publicly.

Because the path to eloquence isn't perfection → practice → performance.

It's practice → fail → reflect → apply → practice again.

Oprah and Tiana are no longer my safety nets. They're my pattern detectors, my reflection partners, my internalization coaches.

They're teaching me to be comfortable being bad at something in public. To record anyway. To speak anyway. To fail fast so I can learn faster.

The Real Win

The real win from that technical AI event wasn't just that I understood the content. It was that I showed up. I put myself in a position to be challenged. I practiced listening in a real-world context.

And now, with Oprah and Tiana's new roles, I'm doing the same with speaking. I'm recording videos without scripts. I'm making mistakes. I'm learning from them. I'm applying the lessons to the next video.

I'm building the skill I actually need: spontaneous, confident communication - even when imperfect.

As always, thanks for reading!