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srsbsnsrunner (profile) wrote,
on 1-8-2014 at 7:06pm
Subject: idols and ideas
Tell us about a teacher who had a real impact on your life,
either for the better or the worse. How is your life different
today because of him or her?

Growing up, I was always the favorite, according to my teachers anyway. I was quiet, studious, polite and sweet, something every teacher wishes all their students would be. It wasn't until high school that I met a teacher whom I clashed heads with.

His name, Mr. Corr. I remember when I got my sophomore schedule at the end of summer all my upper classmen friends told me to be warned, he was a tough as nails teacher and taught us high school kids as if we were in a college level course. At first, I didn't mind him because I would just sit quietly and mind my own business. We didn't start having an issue until the days I would cry uncontrollably in class and have to excuse myself in the middle of a test or quiz to get myself together. Mind you, during this particular year of high school, my parents were going through a rough divorce and I was a total mess as it was.
I actually have a vague memory of me screaming at him in class and then getting kicked out for the rest of the period. My mom made sure I had the tools I needed to pass the class. I've always been smart, I've been told on the border line of genius but for some reason, his class tripped me up on every science subject imaginable. Physics, I had a tutor, chemistry I had a tutor and even bits and pieces of biology, I had a tutor. It was difficult for me to admit that I wasn't the know it all I thought I was and that I actually had to study some material, I couldn't just coast by on my previous knowledge.
I was actually challenged.
And I was scared.

I met with him before class one morning and he bluntly told me that he didn't believe I was going to be able to become an MD as I had originally planned. That shook me to my core, teachers aren't supposed to say things like that? Are they?

But if it wasn't for my high school sophomore general science teacher, I wouldn't be the same person that I am today. It was in that class that I first began to learn that crying in public is no longer okay and I began to learn how to control my emotions when they began to bubble. In my whole academic career, I've never had a teacher challenge me in quite the same ways he did.
Throughout college as I was taking my core science classes, topics would come up that no one else knew, except for me.
Because I learned it, in 10th grade science.
Because even though I got my worst high school grade ever in that class, I was forced to learn, I was forced to use whatever means necessary to keep myself afloat.
I had to survive.
And I did.
With a D out of the class.
But even though the letter grade says I almost failed, I feel like I succeeded.
I went to college the following year and excelled in ways I'd never thought possible. And now here I am sitting on a "high priority" wait list for one of the best PT schools in the country.

If only he could see me now. See what I've become. I think he'd be proud.
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