Starting my junior year was not the greatest for me. New campus, new teachers, new schedule. Everything was new. I felt pretty lost as I do most of the time. I had to change some of my classes because they were either too challenging or I didn’t feel engaged by what we were learning. 

I had to make an appointment with my counselor in order to drop and add classes, I was pretty worried because it was a little late to be joining classes. We talked about what classes were available and the only one that I could join was sociology. I had no idea what that class would be about. (I was told later it's the study of society and how groups of people think.)

This sounded pretty interesting to me. I enjoy social studies, I’ve taken numerous high level social studies classes as well, so I figured this class wouldn’t hurt. 

The first time I walked into this class there were about seven seniors who have heard of me but never talked to me, so the room was pretty stale. I look around and see the walls were covered floor to ceiling with pictures of the famed Mr. Tim Tower from when he first started teaching.. Every wall had about 50 pictures of students all standing in front of the room with a cheesy smile. 

I was memorized by this for about five seconds before Mr. Tower walks in. He had a big smile, and shuffled around the room handing out papers and saying hello to everyone. He gets to me and asks my name, when I tell him he smiles at me and says, “Welcome, it's a pleasure to have you here.” 

That instantly put me in a better mood and washed away any stress that was lingering under my skin. Mr. Tower starts everyday talking about current events he finds interesting or that had just happened that morning. When he talks about them, he doesn’t just stand up by the board and explain the situation and tell us how to think about it. He starts off by asking us what we think about it or if we heard anything about it. He genuinely wants us to speak out and say how we feel about things that are happening in today's world. As a teacher, this is a great thing to do in order to engage students in thinking about the world they live in. 

I would have a completely different perspective on life if I never got to experience the insightfulness and down to earth thinking shown to me by him. Having a sense of humor goes a long way with this as well because if you can’t make someone laugh then how can you understand people as a whole? A lot of the little things he does or says I think get overlooked sometimes. He makes experiencing new things not so scary and overwhelming which makes future challenges seem like a breeze.