The most influential teacher I ever had was at my catholic elementary school. I went to St. Michael School from kindergarten to eighth grade and encountered many true educators. These women, for they all were, taught me the basic principles of math, every single rule of grammar, important times and dates in history, and introductions into the great wonders of science. But through all this, one teacher taught me more than I could have ever imagined, or could ever thank her for.

She was the history teacher, but she also taught sixth grade. The first year I had her class, in fifth grade, I became intrigued by this woman. She was so excited about the most boring thing: history. She made it come alive for us. Her family participated in Civil War reenactments, had a TV without cable, and was not strictly catholic. I was too young to think that these things were weird; to me, they were something I had never experienced and wanted to learn about. What made the Civil War so fascinating that she would want to reenact it? What did her family do if they did not watched television shows?

I discovered that she loved the studying and learning about the Civil War, in part because she loved her country. She wanted to understand and help us understand all of the sides to the war, and also liked to wear hoop skirts. I also uncovered her love of film. Any topic, you name it, the woman had already seen three movies and had two more in mind to watch. Instead of watching TV, her family would watch movies on the weekend and then have an in-depth conversation about the intricacies of the plot that night at dinner.

But movies were not an every night thing. When she wasn't grading furiously, (for she is the fastest assessment grader I have ever had) she was reading a book. She always had one on her nightstand and, when prompted, would tell us all about it (easily taking up a good ten minutes of class time). I see in myself that her love for books inspired my own passion for reading and in fact, the first real literature I read, Pride & Prejudice was in the sixth grade. She explained to us for the first time what the pictures in my head were when I was reading, and encouraged us to strengthen that part of our brain.

What I would say is the absolute most important thing I have ever learned, I learned from this woman. She taught me to love to learn, that learning can never end, and that the pursuit of knowledge is the pursuit of yourself. One specific memory of her knowledge always sticks in my brain. She showed me that knowledge didn't just mean things like quantum physics or the square root of the sun, but everything. Books, fashion, movies, histories, comics, art, anything and everything could be and should be learned. And that is something I shall never forget and always try to fulfill: the truest pursuit of knowledge and the love of that pursuit.