Who in school has had the most impact on your life?

Pre-College Topics High School Life
1

<p>This is not a popularity contest! Consider a teacher, counselor, principal, athletic or performance (drama, music, dance) coach, school librarian or career counselor, club advisor, or anyone in school who really made a difference in your life, who did something or said something to turn your life or academic experience around, etc.</p>

<p>It doesn’t have to be someone in high school. </p>

<p>I was “teacher’s pet” in 2nd grade. Not a crush at all, we just had a great working relationship. When I was in kindergarten, Mrs. Bjerke was my sister’s 4th grade teacher. Kindergarten class let out earlier than 4th grade, and I had to wait for my sister so we could walk home together. Mrs. Bjerke would see me on the playground by myself waiting for my sister, so she had me come into the 4th grade classroom. She sat me down, gave me books to read (just K-level cartoon books), crayons, paper, etc. But the impact was that there I was in my sister’s 4th grade class, absorbing the same information that she and the other kids were learning. The bottom line is that by the end of my sister’s 4th grade year, I was doing 4th grade work.</p>

<p>A child’s mind is a sponge that will absorb as much information as you give it! I am no genius by any stretch of the imagination. I just happen to be lucky enough to have exposure to 4th grade information in kindergarten, just like kids today are exposed to MTV, HBO, Showtime, Jerry Springer, music lyrics, etc.</p>

<p>To get on with the story, when I got to 2nd grade, Mrs. Bjerke had switched from teaching 4th to 2nd grade. I walked into her room the first day of school and we were already old friends! I was one of those geeky, punk kids who still couldn’t walk home alone and had to wait for my sister (now in 6th grade) to get out of class. I would stay after school to clean the blackboards and erasers, sharpen pencils, straighten chairs, put books away, etc. in Mrs. Bjerke’s (now MY) class. She would even have me correct classmate’s papers and write tomorrow’s assignment on the blackboard. When she knew that she would be out of school, she asked me to “take care of the substitute teacher.” When I stayed late after school to help her, she drove me home.
She really let me take ownership of “our” classroom!</p>

<p>My family moved a few blocks away which placed me in another school’s attendance area, but I continued to come back and visit Mrs. Bjerke when I was in 3rd and 4th grades. She has definitely had an impact that affected my study habits, work ethic, volunteer commitment and overall character. She was a teacher and more importantly a friend who I will never forget!</p>

2

<p>haha, deep question… perhaps jk rowling. before reading harry potter, i was so-so school-wise, but then hermione became my hero and i strove to be as good of a student as her. many of the subtle messages in the book have influenced my outlook on life, like when sirius, in the 4th book, talks to harry how one should consider how a man treats people below him to discover what a man is truly like. good books, haha.</p>

3

<p>i moved to the united states in middle school barely knowing any english. i felt lost and dejected after being bullied in elementary school and i honestly believed that i was hopeless and everyone hated me. at home my parents fought all the time and yelled at me all the time and didn’t exactly provide a supportive environment.</p>

<p>enter ms. b, my seventh grade english teacher. she was nice and funny and listened to me. i was a precocious but socially and emotionally unstable twelve-year-old without adult support, and what i really needed was a therapist, not a kindly educator. near the end of eighth grade she told me it ‘wasn’t her job’ to help me, and sent me to the utterly unsympathetic counselor. she called me ‘manipulative’. at the time it seemed like betrayal, but that’s probably one of the most useful things anyone’s ever told me.</p>

<p>now that i’m fifteen and much more self-reliant, i’ve tried to find more positive influences. like my chemistry teacher, mr. m–who is brilliant, british, wildly sarcastic, and has contributed more than i think he knows to my current appreciation for the subject.</p>

<p>both have influenced me, though in different ways.</p>

4

<p>oh, and: my current (sophomore year) math teacher, mr. o, who whipped my ass into shape by giving me a b on my first semester report card. i’m a chronic overachiever by nature, but i’d never been forced to make an effort before.</p>

5

<p>In middle school, it was an old teacher named Mrs. Davis. I was a really bad student before in intermediate school believe it or not, and I had her 3 times a day in 6th grade. She got me interested in my work and all that jazz and I liked her a lot by the time the year was over. She became my new email password for quite a long time. (it’s changed now though ;)) </p>

<p>In high school so far, I think my chemistry teacher Mrs. Kemp would be the one to impact me. She’s so good hearted and is willing to help anyone and she made playful jokes about me all the time like “sarah you really need to study” after showing me my A average for the semester. It was really cool to be in her class and I love chemistry now as a result of her teaching actually. And there was another teacher Mrs. Sparks (we all called her sparky haha) and she was soo kind to us all the time and always being sarcastic and joking and she became another good friend of mine in 8th grade. Sometimes I’d come up and have lunch with her etc etc. But the overall teacher that actually “changed” my habits was Mrs. Davis.</p>

<p><em>tears</em> :p</p>

6

<p>“but then hermione became my hero and i strove to be as good of a student as her. many of the”</p>

<p>Haha…my history teacher, Mrs. Yang, from 9th grade. She’s the only reason why I love history, and my great experiences with her have helped me survive through 2 years of horrible history teachers. <em>shivers</em></p>

<p>EDIT: “oh, and: my current (sophomore year) math teacher, mr. o, who whipped my ass into shape by giving me a b on my first semester report card. i’m a chronic overachiever by nature, but i’d never been forced to make an effort before.”</p>

<p>same here, except Calc BC junior year. Didn’t impact my life as much. I just became OCD about assignments. :p</p>

7

<p>my dad…its really sad how he came to America with 500 dollars and managed to send me to the best private school in Los Angeles.</p>

8

<p>WEIWEI</p>

<p>New Chinese Girl Who Keeps On Taking My 1st Places In All My Subjects. She Can’t Speak English At All But Manages This!!!</p>

<p>I’ve always been the girl who studies a little bit and get A’s. Now, WeiWei has taken over my spot! And I want my SPOT BACK!!!</p>

<p>She has motivated me to do better in school. I JUST WANT TO KILL HER</p>

9

<p>My teacher from a summer program I went to, she was the first teacher who I really had to make an effort for, and I rose to the challenge. She showed me how enjoyable humanities can be, even though I am a self-proclaimed math-science person. And one of her assignments has influenced me to the point that I would eventually like to work with the AIDS epidemic in China because it is not given the attention that the epidemic in Africa is given.</p>

10

<p>Never, ever, ever had one. I’m waiting for someone to inspire me like in some great,majestic movie (like the Dead Poet’s Society or something), but it has never occurred. Oh well…I’ll inspire myself…or just sleep a lot…Ok I’ll go for the latter.</p>

11

<p>a person who I cant get. You said “impact.”
But guess what, I wouldn’t have turned out the way I am today (thank god :slight_smile: ) had it not been for her.</p>

12

<p>Without a doubt my coach in Miami. I’ve only known him personally for the last couple years but he is the best role model I have ever had. </p>

<p>His confidence, work ethic, and attitude in general are excellent. I try to remember everything he says and to live my life in the same manner that he does. </p>

<p>He has turned a sport that I was beginning to hate into a new sport for me and made me so excited about working out again.</p>

<p>I also think what makes him a great coach is his focus on the positives. I believe that this encouragement has helped me to love a sport that I almost quit.</p>

13

<p>Although I’ve been homeschooled since kindergarten, the “Most Impact” award would probably go to my community college biology instructors. All along in my homeschooling experiences, esp. through middle school, I knew that I would have to do my high school lab science courses at the CC, since you can’t exactly get all that equipment for a homeschool. Though my parents weren’t planning on sending me to the CC until high school, some homeschool friends of ours suggested when I was in eighth grade that I take a class I had taken before (such as algebra 1) to acclimate myself to the classroom environment (mind you, I had never been in a classroom). So I registered for an algebra class, but my mom, perusing the schedule of classes, stumbled across a late-start, six-week biology study skills class. “You’re going to be taking biology later on – you should take this class,” suggested my mom. While I certainly didn’t dread this class, I don’t exactly remember being excited about it.</p>

<p>The first day of this study skills class was anything other than what I had expected. Upon entering what turned out to be a microbiology lab, I looked around for some signs of life (non-microscopic life, that is!). The room was almost lifeless, save for a student at a counter in the corner re-doing an experiment. Confused at the apparent lack of hustle and bustle so characteristic of initial class meetings, I poked my head into a faculty office adjoining the lab. “Umm, am I in the right room for Bio 52?” I asked nervously to an older gentleman – Mr. Rose, as I later learned – as he emerged from the office. Thinking to himself for a moment, he turned towards his office-mate and said to her, “Bio 52 – are we offering that this semester?” “Great,” I thought. “Here I am for a study skills class, of all things, and the professors don’t even know what’s being offered this semester. I want out!” Needless to say, I was having serious doubts about this class, and even more doubts about the long four-plus years I had remaining at the CC.</p>

<p>As it turned out, only three people had registered for the class, and I was the only one who showed up! So I ended up doing the class independent study (I get homeschooled everywhere!) with Mr. Rose’s office-mate (who turned out to be Dr. Berlani). While I can’t say that I learned much in the way of study skills, what I DID acquire was the confidence to get to know instructors and to approach them as people, not as walking encyclopedias who don’t care about students.</p>

<p>The following semester (freshman year), I took an introductory biology class with another instructor, Ms. Peters, and I took the corresponding lab with Dr. Berlani. Of course, I got to know Dr. Berlani even better. While my lecture section had 60-70 people in it, I actually started to get to know Ms. Peters. In the latter part of the semester, my lecture section had to have a substitute instructor for several meetings because Ms. Peters was substituting in another class whose instructor’s wife had just had a baby. This teacher (Mrs. Schrey) was, like Ms. Peters, a really good teacher, and I went up to her after her first lecture in our class to ask her some questions about the lecture material (the cardiovascular system, as I recall). Long story short, I got to know her too.</p>

<p>I realize this is dragging on and on, but in the three years I have known these instructors, they have encouraged me and awoken in me a passion for biology that I hadn’t realized was ever there. All of them are the types of people with whom I can sit in their office for an hour and talk about anything and everything UNrelated to biology. One recent example of their care and compassion was after a not-so-great AP test last month (see <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=60467)%5B/url%5D”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=60467)</a>. I absolutely love these people, and I hope to remain friends with them long beyond high school. :)</p>