It’s hard to narrow down one person who positively impacted my life since I was blessed with amazing parents and grandparents, but as I sit here and contemplate I don’t want to make it the Obvious choices. I wanted to think outside the box and give credit to a person and a profession who help impact children’s life’s everyday.

Teachers work long hours and little credit for all that they do. My 6th grade teacher to this days words are stuck in my head. When ever one of us would act up she would always say “young people … a mind is terrible thing to waste”. We would then have to repeat “ and a wasted mind is terrible”. At the time I had no idea what it actually meant. She was always encouraging us to think outside the box, developing our minds to think for itself, punctuality and staying focused.

As I grow older and develop myself and my career I realize she had an huge impact. I love math but I was never the text book math guy. She taught me that it was ok to learn new ways to find out math problems as long as I could explain my logic and reasoning. Turns out I ended up being pretty good at math. Those lessons taught me to think outside the box to solve issues and problems while also thinking for myself.

The next lesson of punctuality stays with me to this day. She would not tolerate tardiness. It may sound cruel but students who were tardy would have to sit in hallway until the next period would start and would have to read. Being prompt is important in the business world. Your time is not more valuable than someone else’s and that’s part of the lesson I learned.

I used to talk a lot in her class and she would preach focus. My desk would be separate a lot of times so I couldn’t talk to other students. As soon as I would behave I would be right back with the group. She would always tell me how smart I was when focused.

Looking back at it she was a very tough strict teacher but taught me many life lessons. I decided to take the leep of faith into the entrepreneurial world this year. Everyday I just think if I didn’t have a teacher like her would I have made the jump and took a chance on myself.