Drawing Critique

Today was my first critique in drawing class.  I went into the class with high hopes, feeling good about my first attempt at charcoal sketching.

Then I snuck a look at the girl's next to me.

Holy shit!  Did you trace that thing or something?  Look at the folds in the tablecloth!  Look at the shading on the pears!  Look at the texture on the eggplants!  How the hell did you do that??

We all tacked our drawings onto the critique wall and talked about them as a class.  There were a couple other drawings that were equally amazing.

This one:

and this one

were pretty much agreed were the best.  Obviously with any drawing there's going to be some minor issues, but I mean, seriously, how does someone draw this well?  It's so unfair.

When we got to my drawing on the wall, my professor kind of stopped and was like, "This one, well, it's obviously a beginner.  Probably their first time drawing with coal."

Yup.

"Whose is this?"

I reluctantly raised my hand.

"Do you consider yourself fearless?"

Umm....

"Because I like how you seem fearless in your drawing, you kind of just jumped right in there and went for it."

Uh, yeah, sure!  That's right!  I'm fearless!

"It's a really good start, you just need to focus more on proportion and details."

Alright, it's better than nothing.

So our next assignment, just a one day thing, was another still life.  Only this time we had actual objects in front of us.  After the professor made us watch him draw the still life (seriously, it took like 45 minutes just watching it), he set us loose around the room.  This was the view from my spot:

Reeeeeal exciting stuff, huh?

So basically we had to take this 3-dimensional view and flatten it down onto our drawing pad.  You can't really see it from the picture, but the lighting was creating some shadows and shading on the shapes.  The white on white was giving me some issues, but overall it's not too difficult.  Right?
Here's my progress so far:

So, overall, nothing great.  But not too shabby, either.