Teachers and professors are some of the most important people in today's society. They shape our education and basically mold us in mental knowledge and growth. During my entire school career and even starting college last year, all of my teachers have been great. Yes, some haven't been the best but overall, I have never turned to disliking a subject because of the teacher.

In fact, some of my teachers have taught classes that shaped what I wanted to study in college. I took two classes my senior year of high school called "Western Civilizations I" and "Western Civilizations II" that made we love the study of architecture and different art forms, and now Architecture is my major at my university. Now, I don't think that the class itself made me want to study architecture, the teacher that taught the class made me fall in love with the different architecture styles throughout European history because his passion for teaching the subject was so infectious in the classroom.

I have had so many other teachers like that in my life, history teachers in middle school, English teachers in high school, government teachers, and even engineering and math teachers; however, I had two Spanish teachers in high school that truly made me fall in love with the Spanish language. So much so, that I decided to work toward a Spanish minor.

Now, because of one teacher, I have decided to drop my major: here's why.

I signed up for a Spanish conversation class, a class that is supposed to be structured as one big discussion every class, just to get used to speaking Spanish. Working on my sixth year of consecutively taking Spanish classes, I would say that I know most of the grammar as well as basic sentence structure. I am definitely not fluent but I can communicate.

My professor said that the class would be conversation based and that overall the class would be very calm and not too demanding. I took her word for it and after add/drop week, she kicked the class into high gear. Now I know that this is a somewhat upper level college course, I most definitely wasn't looking for a free pass by any means, but when a class is supposed to be conversation based and during the entire hour and fifteen minutes that the class is in session, only having a two minute discussion is kind of a let down. She would read directly from the textbook and make us do activities that were either multiple choice or fill in the blank, with a word bank provided.

In the syllabus, there were a few basic grading groups: homework, discussions, class participation, and midterm/finals. Homework is a no brainer for me because I consider myself a hard working student and, walking into the class, I loved the Spanish language so much that the homework wasn't a burden. Class participation is a easy A, just be awake and ready to learn. Discussions are a different story. I this class we have two discussions and they are very informal. The discussions just involve talking to a partner while the professor walks around the room and grades based on what she hears. I walked out of my discussion thinking that I did pretty well. That, even though everything wasn't 100% perfect, she knew that the class just started and she could understand what I was saying. When I got the "C" for my first discussion, let's just say that I was confused.

When I talked to her, she said that because I didn't have perfect sentence structure, she couldn't give me a better grade. Understandable, but kind of ridiculous because if we never practice sentence structure in class and we have to basically teach ourselves at home and hope for the best, how can she expect us to have "perfect sentence structure". Either way, I let it slide and just told myself to keep doing the homework and do well on the midterm.

When the midterm rolled around, I studied really hard; however, she didn't tell us what sections the midterm would cover. We never took any tests so I didn't know what she was looking for and she said to just study the eight sections that we had covered in the book. So I did my best, even though I was slammed with Architecture work and when I took the exam, I walked out of it thinking that I did alright. Enough to at least get a B. When my grade came back as a "C" again, I went to talk to her about it once more and she then said that my sentence structure was terrible and that I was not going to pass the class if I didn't fix it. So I asked her if I could go to her office hours and then she could help me because obviously what I was doing wasn't working. She told me, "You are more than welcome to come, but I am not going to help you. You can ask questions on vocabulary and verb conjugation, but I will not teach you again."

After that conversation, I was extremely upset because what she didn't know is that I had worked for hours and hours on my sentence structure for that midterm, whenever I had a free minute, I would try and fix my mistakes. Then when she said that she wouldn't help me, I was so confused and honestly lost interest in Spanish all together because my teacher didn't believe that I was trying and she refused to work with me.

The final straw for me happened recently, I talked to some other students in my class and we all came to the conclusion that all six people in that class were having an issue either with the content of the course of our professors grading. When we talked to her about it she told us to go to the library and hire tutors to help us. Being a person that has very little free time, I spoke up and told her that I didn't have the time to go and use a tutor because my days are almost always slammed with work and she told me, verbatim, "Amanda, at this point you're just going to have to try harder."

Before this class, I loved the Spanish language. My teacher's in high school were always so supportive of me and they always encouraged me and truly believed in my abilities to learn the language. Even my Spanish III and IV professor was the same way. Now, this teacher has taken away the true joy that Spanish used to bring me. The only reason that I am considering taking a Spanish class next semester is to fill credits for an elective, but I am hoping that I will regain my love of Spanish then.

The point of this article isn't to bash my professor for not caring about me or my Spanish education, its to prove that educators make such an impact on student's desire to learn. Taking this Spanish class has made me so much more grateful for all the teacher's in my life that have believed in my education and in me as a student. My college Spanish teacher made me hate Spanish, but she also made me feel so blessed for all the previous educators in my life that have planted in me a desire to learn.