Can anyone point to one experience in ther academic lives that changed everything?

[Anonymous]

Please share.
My neighbor says that his son's 5th grade math teacher was so mean and so poor, that his son lost an interest in school for years. He is not the type to blame anyone, so this seems real.
I am sure that people have positive stories too.

[Anonymous]

I switched majors from biology/pre-med to journalism because I realized I hated science.

[Anonymous]

I was f-ing up royally when I started high school. (Not known at the time, but undiagnosed ADHD). I was getting bad grades because I couldn't focus and was essentially giving up. I had one class in particular that I really didn't take seriously and goofed off in. It was history and the teacher was really young and I made his job much harder than it had to be.

Well at the end of the year, our class had to put on a history "news show" type of thing and he assigned everyone different roles (anchor people, news correspondents, camera and audio/visual people, etc.). I was the biggest slack off in the class but the teacher apparently saw that I was better than that. He made me the producer. I went to him afterwards and asked if it was a joke. He explained that he knew I could handle it and he thought I could use the challenge.

Not to be all "chicken soup for the soul" but he was dead right. I took it seriously and did a great job. Around the same time, my parents wanted to switch me to private school (because of the slacking off) and this teacher ended up writing me a rec for private. I don't know what he wrote, but I got into my school of choice with awful grades. I would say that this experience changed everything for me. I went on to a top university and then law school. This teacher’s little experiment gave me the confidence in myself that I needed to help me focus and he clearly helped me to get into private school where I was able to finally get the specialized attention that I needed to succeed.

[Anonymous]

One of both:

I had a terrible (and mean) math teacher in elementary school that made me math-phobic. My Mother, who was a teacher and also not a "blamer," firmly believed this, as I scored very highly on math aptitude tests, and people usually like what they're good at. I made A's in math in high school, but I dislike math intensely to this day.

On the other side of the coin, I had a sixth grade english teacher who realized that I was bored out of my mind, and took me aside and gave me an ancient 1920s (?) era textbook on latin and greek, and their relationship to the english language, to study. I was a National Merit Scholar, and I give most of the credit to this teacher. I aced the verbal portions of the PSAT and SAT, primarily because I had learned to "interpret" english words that I had never seen before. I'm going to do my best to make my DC take at least some latin.

[Anonymous]

Always thought of myself as smart, but didn't have great study skills. Come 9th grade, top 50% of our class went on to biology while the lower half had to do earth science and wait a year. I got put in earth science. It was a huge wake-up call and pushed me to work my butt off, especially in science, from there on out. Graduated with my class science award.

[Anonymous]

Didn't work very hard in high school (usually felt guilty about it -- I didn't hate school but I had bad work habits). Senior year took a First Year German class that was considered advanced where the teacher both demanded a lot but also praised us for doing well. I ended up loving it and excelling. Got into good colleges based on this teacher's recommendation.

[Anonymous]

Two experiences:

My high school senior English teacher - for the first time, I learned to read between the lines and better understand there was more the story than the words.

In college, I was a chemistry major and knew it would be tough so I deliberately did poorly on the German foreign language placement exam so I could take the 100 level course. My second year of college, I figured the 200 level would be tough so I took a 100 level Latin class (I'd had 3 years of Latin in high school). The instructor I had was astonding. Latin used to be a deciphering exercise for me but he turned it into a living world. I learned philosophy, history, politics, intrigue, sociology - and of course language. I learned different interpretations of the same poetry I'd learned in high school. I had no idea that the sparrow in Catullus' poem was interpreted by some to be his penis! I looked at Latin with whole new eyes. Entranced, I kept taking Latin courses (they fulfilled degree requirements) until the end of my third year when I finally gave up Chemistry and declared myself a Classics major. I became so much better rounded and am an incredible writer and analyst - skills that serve me well even though I'm years and miles away from the Classics. In my heart, I'm still a Classisist all thanks to Dr. Franklin, teacher of that 100 level Latin class.

[Anonymous]

My mother telling me I could do it. I was in 9th grade, scared about my future and my dismal performance in school so far. She was right. Graduated HS with straight As.

[Anonymous]

My 10th grade English teacher assigned zillions and zillions of vocabulary words. We had quizzes every week all year. To this day, I can recognize words from 10th grade. It was a pain, but it made me love words and using them. It helps me every day as a lawyer to be able to use words to describe things well.

[Anonymous]

I would love to be able to find some of these people to tell them thanks.

[Anonymous]

I have a couple (both good and bad).

In sixth grade we were split up into groups for math etc. and I was in the middle ability group but there were so many kids in the class I ended up sitting with a couple other girls at a table at the back of the room instead of at a desk near the front like everyone else. I didn't learn much that year, we were always distracting each other, and the teacher never called on us. I never recovered from that year of math - got stuck in the lower/middle track (essentially two years of math behind some of my friends) and never caught up. I also never liked math after that point.

On the positive side, I studied Spanish from a very early age and took classes before school in elementary school. Five years of these informal classes gave me enough knowledge to skip Spanish I in middle school. This afforded me many opportunities - the ability to start at a higher level and achieve a higher level, attend a prestigious state summer language academy which really improved my fluency, get a 5 on AP Spanish exam, study abroad in college, get internships and jobs requiring Spanish. Studying a language, but specifically being pushed at an accelerated pace, opened a lot of doors for me personally and professionally.

[Anonymous]

I had a chemistry teacher in 11th grade who prided herself on being a "great, tough" teacher. How did she know she was so great and tough? So many of her students failed her class, including me, formerly an excellent honors student who had gotten As in previous high school science classes. I was a National Merit Semifinalist who flunked a quarter of chemistry?! How could a smart kid flunk chemistry? Obviously, I was not smart, I was stupid. And so was everyone else who flunked -- we were all dumb. And, it was just a coincidence that many of us were girls.

It shook my confidence and made me think that I wasn't smart for years. I had no resources at home to help me -- parents didn't know chem and didn't think (or didn't have the confidence in my ability?) to hire a tutor.

Besides shaking my confidence (which really affected me in all dimensions, not just school), the timing of that class torpedoed my GPA and ruined my chances of getting into a good college.

It took me probably 10-15 years to recover my confidence and work my way up to a top-20 law school where I graduated with excellent grades.

In the interim, I took Chemistry at college, did well and became a tutor for Chemistry, among other subjects.

That teacher ultimately was fired when a department head looked more closely at the performance of her students and marshaled the facts --- many students with high IQs and excellent grades in other subjects were flunking her class. Maybe the problem was her, not the 50% of each incoming class?

By contrast, at the same school I had an inspiring biology teacher. He treated us like grownups, welcomed all questions and assigned readings and projects that made you think. Some of the books he assigned in his bio class are still some of my favorites. As a result, I continued to pursue anatomy courses and aced biology in college and still love to read about medical and public health issues to this day, even though that is not part of my professional life.

My own experience has made me very watchful of my daughter's school experience. When she was little and ready to read, but the school wouldn't teach her, I taught her. We left that bad school by 2nd grade. Even in the new school, I quickly moved to change a bad personality fit for her teacher-wise. When she has trouble with homework, she can always ask me for help and I always help her figure out how to figure it out. As a result, she is a confident, inquisitive kid, and other teachers have described to me with surprise what a confident and fierce and totally self-motivated student she is.

[Anonymous]

AP English teacher - taught me to think before I write.

[Anonymous]

I took Econ 101 and 102 ONLY because they were requried for the Business degree I thought I wanted to major in. Also as a required pre-requistie I took Econ 201 and 202 (next levels up but still introductory). Those 2nd level courses finally got out of the horrible draw nuts and bolts of Econ 101 and 102 and into how Econ could be applied to more real-world issues (particularly 202). I found this absolutely and totally fascinating. Became an Econ major...led to my first job out of college (econ & finance consulting company) and my second job which became my career working on trade-related issues. I guess it was the better teacher at the higher level.

In pre-college I have many teachers I loved and some I disliked for playing favorites but can't really point to any that strongly influenced me to turn something around one way or the other. I was one of those people school came pretty easily to and just took it as a natural fact that one needed to do homework and study in order to do well in school. I so couldn't understand (lack of empathy on my part as a HS kid) those that didn't see studying as part of their "job" that I gave up on peer tutoring after a few sessions when it became clear that the biggest problem most of them had was just not studying/doing homework.

[Anonymous]

I can think of lots of examples, all positive. Two math teachers stood out in the early years. One made sure I got tested for gifted ASAP after I moved from out-of-state -- doesn't sound like much, but since I was getting Cs in social studies at the time -- who knew that the only way to get an A from this teacher was word-for-word plaigiarism from the textbook?! -- his vote of confidence made a big difference. The other taught me how to work around bureaucracies and not take "no" for an answer when I wanted something and was denied it by someone who wasn't making a considered judgment. He was an ex-military guy and devoted an entire Geometry class to this subject after I arrived looking despondent and he asked me what was up. I only hope one or more of the other kids in class benefited from that tangent. OTOH, we made collective sport of getting this guy off-topic, so no one really minded.

Never had a good science teacher and I suspect that explains why I was never considered science as a major,

One college professor made a big difference by saying the right thing at the right time in a lecture class. It was an offhand comment about how you don't really win an argument when you defeat a particular opponent -- you only know you're right (vs. the better debater) when you can counter the best argument you can think of on the other side. I guess it wasn't just this comment, but also the fact that you could see he practiced what he preached and his work was better for it.

Two other college professors, when asked to write letters of rec for law school applications, pushed hard for me to apply to grad school as well and, as a result, I ended up in a PhD program. One was pretty funny: "It's hard to advise anyone to become an academic these days, but if anyone should be one, you should."

Finally my dissertation advisor who offered to pay for my fellowship out of his own pocket if the grad student advisor didn't stop threatening to cut me off because of a couple incompletes (new policy). Another ex-military guy with little patience for bureaucracy, LOL! He was also a great role model who delighted in rather than was threatened by smart younger people and who was in academia for all the right reasons (loved to read, write, think, talk).