Those who can, teach.

Chalk it up to the fact that I come from a long line of teachers, but I've always had the utmost respect for academia. So I'm finding it particularly difficult to craft a blog entry about a single teacher or professor who had a significant impact on my life. The truth of the matter is, when you add up my pre-school, elementary school, middle-school, high school, college, graduate school, and law school experiences, I am the product of nearly 200 teachers. Add to that the coaches, mentors, TAs, guidance counselors, advisors, each bestowing upon me the lessons you cannot learn in a classroom, and the number approaches closer to 250.

I'd be lying to say that every single one of those 250 people imparted upon me a lesson I carry with me today. And it would be absolutely false to suggest that I enjoyed each and every class I sat through. Frankly, there were some in middle-school that I probably could have taught better than the teacher. . . BUT- I can say that who I am today because of the support and encouragement of a long line of teachers. So I thought I'd adopt yet another list highlighting the very best.

- My mom. No, I was not homeschooled. But my mom was my gifted education teacher in elementary school. I found it terribly annoying at the time, but she was, hands-down, the only teacher in the gifted curriculum that actually did well at making extracurricular actually fun and challenging. While I'm glad she didn't follow me to middle and high-school, the folks who were around when she did move up to those grades were far more fortunate than I.

- My middle school art teacher. She did far more for my brother than she did for me, but being asked to participate in extra art classes and being given the liberty to explore new mediums outside the every-day classroom instilled in me an appreciation for fine-arts that I carry with me today. It's the same love that leads me to sit, fascinated, for hours in the national gallery, staring at the same picture, and seeing something new each time.

- My ninth grade English teacher. Hands down, the scariest man on the face of the plannet. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to throw Great Expectations out the car window, down the trash chute, into the pool, or off the deck while reading it the summer before I started high school as part of our assigned reading; but the fundamentals of grammar, composition, and critical reading we built during that year-long course planted the seads of the writer and reader I would eventually become.

- My junior and Senior year English teachers. They were the best of friends and the best of teachers. Quirky in a way that I would only later come to realize typified the best of the English profession, they walked me through the woods with Walden and Dillard; guided us to the town square with Hester Pryne; and took us to the Bull Fights with Ernest Hemmingway. Sure, there was Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye and Hamlet and all the "typical" high school thomes. But then there was As You Like It, and As I lay Dying, and Portrait of and Artist as a Young Man, and the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. They taught me to pick apart the words on the pages in search of greater meaning, of aesthetic truth, and of intellectual engagement. And they taught me to put pen to paper. To show, not tell. To craft, not speak.

- My senior year government teacher. Quirkier still than the english pair, she was a rather nutty woman with more passion for the constitution than I have every witnessed. Until, of course, she introduced me to the Federalist Papers. Numbers 10 and 51. That was all we read then. It was not until college that I would come to understand her penchant for all things steeped in the great American Experiment. But, looking back, the passion that still burns deep within me began as a spark in that classrooom.

My college professors were even more important, still. My Poli Sci advisor is probably, hands down, the best mentor I've ever found. Critical yet fair, and always impassioned, she took that spark and helped me shape it into a career. My time and narrative prof helped me not only understand, but actually love Virginia Woolf. Yes, you read that correctly. My American Fiction professor turned Melville into music, and my digital imaging professor opened the world of photoshop to my fingertips.

By the time I'd reached graduate school, my thirst for knowledge had grown a bit less awestruck and a bit more focused. But the inspiration remained-- my International Security Professor taught me the true spirit of courage and service to the country. His stories from Vietnam were breathtaking, and the lessons he sought to impart, even more sobering. My political analysis professor-- a stickler for the red pen, taught me how to peel away verbiage from my prose with the fine scalple of an analyst (no, you wouldn't know it from my blogs, I know). My torts professor didn't teach me much about torts (at least my grades wouldn't seem to say so), but she did teach me about how not to let law school beat me down, but rather, how to hold my head high and succeed. And my constitutional law professor taught better than anyone I've ever met and will likely meet again.

Now that I've been forced into the "real world" and away from the classroom, these are just some of the the voices and lessons I carry with me each and every day. If only the world had more like them.