The Event That Changed My Life

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Describe an event from your past and how it shaped you as a person.

I'm a victim, I thought. The books were closed. The papers were signed. It was official. The next school year, I would enter the fifth grade -- again.

I knew I was gifted and capable of more, but after we moved from urban Oklahoma City to Tulsa before the fourth grade, my intelligence was meaningless. Suburban-school luxuries like computers, advanced math, and special ways to learn English flooded my brain. Homework was an afterthought.

Homework was not an afterthought to my fifth grade teacher, however. With her annoying, dogged persistency, Mrs. Thomas gave me "zero slips" whenever I "forgot" an assignment. She was on a mission to make my life miserable. In the cloakroom a...

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...t nightmares, who I am today is a direct result of the self-assurance and humility I gained after my first fifth grade. Mrs. Thomas did not create my destiny, but she shaped it. Even when nobody seemed to care, she, a thankless teacher, reached out and hugged me. She proved, in that simple gesture, that the world was not against me, "and that," as one poet wrote, "has made all the difference."

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