My Academic Inspiration by Grace

My Academic Inspiration by Grace - October 2019 Scholarship Essay

The person who has inspired me most academically is my Psychology teacher my Junior year, Mr. Bisson. Before taking his class, I had no interest in psychology whatsoever. I thought that Psychology was limited to textbooks and that the only place it ever applied was in counseling sessions. When I started his class, I was immediately expecting to be bored by everything that he was going to be teaching. But Mr. Bisson made Psychology a passion of mine. He made me interested in why I think the way I think, and what causes me to react the way I do.
Now, after only a year in his class, I've decided that I want to become a researcher in the Psychology field. I truly believe that if I had anybody else teaching me psychology that year, that I would be in a completely different place than I am now. I would not be motivated in school, and I honestly would not be attending my classes most of the time. Because of his class, and the realization that research in the psychology field is what I want to do with the rest of my life, I now see that all of these required classes that I'm taking are just ways to push a few steps forward to my ultimate goal.
I remember the exact moment that I had this realization. It was on one of Mr. Bisson's "Freaky Fridays," or days when he devotes an entire class period to answer any of our psychology-related questions, whether they applied to what we were learning at the time or not. I remember asking him, "why do we dream?" He then proceeded to go into all of the different theories, but ultimately explain that Psychologists don't know. I couldn't comprehend how humans, after years of research, still didn't have a clue. It was mind-boggling. I decided that I wanted to research it. I decided that I wanted to be a part of the pursuit of understanding. I want to know why people as a whole do what they do.
Without Mr. Bisson, I wouldn't have known any of this. I wouldn't have realized what I want to do, and I wouldn't understand how important it is that we as people do understand these things. Because with understanding comes advancement, and isn't that what people have been trying to achieve for centuries?