My Life-Changing Teacher by Molly

My Life-Changing Teacher by Molly - October 2019 Scholarship Essay

Who has most inspired me academically? Without a doubt, I would say my history teacher, Mr. Fritz. When I was in elementary school, I remember absolutely hating social studies. However, when I got to seventh grade, that changed immediately. I am not going to lie; I was a little scared of Mr. Fritz right away, but after the first week of school, he was my favorite teacher by far. I loved him.
Mr. Fritz is such a great teacher. He genuinely cares about the kids and tries his best to prepare them for their future. He is constantly reading books, reading articles, and watching lectures to learn more. He makes history extremely interesting, and it went from my least favorite class to my favorite class very quickly. My junior year is when I really started to look up to Mr. Fritz. He is unbelievably smart. He teaches history, Spanish, and psychology. During the last week of school my junior year, Mr. Fritz told us that he would be teaching an online forensic psychology and anthropology class that summer. I decided to sign up for both.
I loved forensic psychology. Since Mr. Fritz was teaching it, I emailed him and told him I was thinking about majoring in psychology and asked if he knew of any jobs with psychology other than counseling. Later that day, I received a very long email back. He told me that he thought of some options and confirmed them with research. Then, he gave me two suggestions. He told me to try lots of different classes in college to see what I’m interested in, and he also sent me a link to a psychology class he was auditing in. He told me that auditing in that class would give me a better idea of the classes I would be taking in college if I were to major in psychology.
After the first five weeks of the class, Mr. Fritz’s wife scanned the textbook readings for me, and Mr. Fritz emailed them to me. As the summer went on, I told him I was questioning majoring in psychology. Like usual, Mr. Fritz thought of many other options that he thought I would be interested in. He also recommended many books to me and told me I could borrow his if I did not want to buy them. Whenever I needed, Mr. Fritz was always there with lots of information trying to help me.
By the time school started, I was still confused about what I wanted to major in. At that time, I was thinking about biology. One day, when I walked into the history room, Mr. Fritz said, “Molly, come here. I bought this book for you. If you like it, watch the lectures that go with it. It will help you see if biology is for you.” He had bought me this 800-page book that he had recommended to me this summer because he knew it would help me decide if biology was really for me. After a couple weeks, I finished the book. It was one of the best books I have ever read, but I decided I did not want to major in any type of science anymore. I knew that I wanted to be like Mr. Fritz.
I loved history and was very interested in psychology and sociology, which made me think of something Mr. Fritz had suggested to me. He had asked me if I ever considered being a librarian. He told me he was certified to be a librarian so he had a backup when he could not teach anymore. Since I could major in pretty much anything I wanted before getting this library certificate, I thought this might be what I wanted to do. After school one day, I talked to Mr. Fritz and asked about the library degree. He told me that he knew there were two routes to get the degree, but he could not remember exactly what the other route was.
Two days later, Mr. Fritz told me he figured it out. The night before, he had called a couple places and did some research trying to learn more about this option. He had printed some papers off for me and explained what the option was. Since then, he has let me borrow another one of his books about psychology. He has helped me with English and speech too, even though I am sure he had other things to do. Now I am planning on majoring in history, psychology, and maybe political science. I also would like to minor in sociology and economics. Before, I would have never even considered doing that. Mr. Fritz has inspired me to work hard to become smart, which created many options for me.
I would never have dreamt that I would end up doing this, and without Mr. Fritz’s help I would still probably have no idea what to do. He is so smart, and such a great person. He cares so much about all the kids and is always willing to help. When he was talking to me one day, he told me, “Hopefully you just get a really good professor that you like, and you’ll just know you want to major in that subject.” I don’t think he realized when he was telling me that, but to me, he is that really good professor that he described.