Freewrite #3 - One Significant Person or Significant Event

The decision to major in Biology came as a bit of a surprise to me. That is especially true because my first college level Biology class, 103, was just last semester, and my first day of class was overwhelming. Since I had previously taken mostly required GenEd classes along with some Psychology classes, which was my previous major, I wasn’t really prepared for a Lecture Hall filled with 200 students and a class based mostly on power point slides and a huge textbook full lof a multitude of details on various biological topics. Worse, my first impression of the professor, a young, female grad student who didn’t really seem to be enjoying her first day teaching, wasn’t good. She admitted right up front that she had been given the class at the last minute. My schedule had the instructor listed as "TBA" even that morning. After my first day of listening to her ramble on at lightning speed and basically read the power point slides to us, I was both overwhelmed and underwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the vast amount of material we were expected to digest, and underwhelmed by the professor’s teaching style. By week two, however, my opinion of the professor changed dramatically, as I saw she was attempting to empathize with the room full of students who were expecting to be taught this material in some way that might make it doable. She began encouraging questions, and would gladly slow down, repeat material, go back to slides when asked, and offer assistance during office hours or by email. It was when I first took her up on this and visited her in her office that I saw how she truly wanted to help. Not only that, her love of biology was contagious! She even offered to help me with questions I had that didn’t really relate to what we "needed to know." In a few short weeks, I was acing the exams and quizzes and growing more curious about science than I already was previously. My professor’s smile and enthusiasm was key to my decision to switch majors, and I’m so glad that I did!