Maya Angelou: An Intellectual Analysis

As American poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou once said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” I learned this lesson myself during the second semester of my freshman year of high school. I had never understood just how dramatically someone could impact your life for the short amount of time they were in it for. However, I’d come to find one very special teacher who would change my entire mindset on life and flip my world upside down; Mrs.Ray. This teacher motivated me, inspired me, and most importantly she changed my life so drastically that I can not even remember the person I was previous to stepping foot in her classroom.
Mrs.Ray

What does that have to do with anything?” Well, most importantly it provides a background for me to build off of to describe how she motivated me. Like I said, she was like a parental figure to many of her students, me being one of them. I felt like I couldn’t let her down or disappoint her. The fear of disappointing her motivated me to actually do my work and try in her class. I still remember the first and only time that I didn’t complete an assignment for her class. I was absolutely terrified of what the consequences might be. Not only did I worry about what she would do, whether it be to make us go to lunch and learn or just silent lunch, I was also worried about what she’d think. Like I stated, it was the only time I ever didn’t complete an assignment for her class, the reason being that she was the one person that I just couldn’t bring myself to disappoint. Another thing she also motivated me to do was drama club. Mrs.Ray was all the time telling us about her past experiences as a theater teacher, and they enthralled me so much that I decided that I too wanted to have similar experiences. It was that semester that my friends convinced me to take part in the play that was happening. Ever since then, I have been in love with acting. Had I never met Mrs.Ray, I would have never discovered my love of theater and