I owe it all to you.

From the time I skipped to my classroom in kindergarten at age five, to crawling up three flights of stairs every other period at age eighteen, my teachers always made the trek worth it.

I owe my love for learning to you. Constantly being pushed to my intellectual limit, you never let me give in before I reached my potential. Answering questions when I couldn’t grasp a specific concept or forcing me to think it through on my own, you knew exactly what I needed to reach my eureka moment. You knew what I was capable of before I ever realized.

I owe my confidence to you. When I proved to be the best, you recognized that and gave me the bragging rights I deserved. When I royally screwed up, you criticized me in a constructive manner instilling confidence in me as opposed to tearing me down. You showed me the fine line between conceited and confident.

I owe my success to you. I know how to find credible information amongst bogus articles on the internet. I know how to calculate percent discounts and a twenty percent tip without a calculator. I know how to organize and time manage effectively. You succeeded in preparing me with basic life skills the majority of my peers don’t have.

Going to a district where the average graduating class is close to seven hundred, one does not expect to have a personized relationship with a teacher who interacts with more than a hundred students on any given day. Yet, these amazing people never failed me. Whether I needed a shoulder to cry on when I was stressed to my breaking point or needed a verbal swift kick in the bum to bring me back to reality, they were the ones I turned to.

Even now, going on my second year as a tiger alum, I still turn to these teachers for love and support. While my peers struggled through Psychology 100, I emailed my AP Psych teacher to show my appreciation for preparing me thoroughly. When I needed to observe a classroom, I turned to my fourth-grade teacher for support. After being stranded at my high school due to missing my bus, I called up my seventh-grade teacher for a ride home. Along with many other interactions with the teachers of my past, I never once feel like I can’t turn to you to give my thanks, to ask for advice, or to simply check in to see how their days are going.

Thank you for showing me that knowledge is power. Thank you for being my confidence when I had none in myself. Thank you for making me an independent learner with the basic skills necessary to survive college. Thank you for shaping me into the ambitious, confident young woman I am today. Thank you and I truly do owe it all to you.

Sincerely,

A grateful tiger alum