Jennifer Snyder... a thank-you thrown to the wind...

As I've graduated, I have made the effort to contact all the people, past and present, who have greatly impacted my growth as a student, as an academic, and as a human being, to give them my heartfelt thanks. Despite some challenges (many of my teachers have retired), I have found quite a bit of success. I have contacted Dr. H and Mrs. M, from elementary school, and Dr. F and Dr. PB, from college. There has only been one teacher whom I have been entirely unsuccessful at contacting, which brings me to this post. Some of the information I include might not make sense to all of you - but if the right person reads it, she'll know exactly what it means.

As a senior in high school, I was enrolled in Dr. Jennifer Snyder's college physics class through the Math-Physics Institute at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Dr. Snyder knows how hard my senior year was. I was in a car accident that fall, and missed two and a half months of school. When I returned to school, I faced the challenge of making up two and a half months of school work. Dr. Snyder was amazing. Her class was the most challenging, but possibly the easiest class to make up. She tutored me privately after school for the entire second semester. Together, with a lot of hard work and determination, I finished that class - with an A.

I don't know how much of the physics I remember. If I was to take another physics class, I think it would come back to me easily, but since I haven't studied it in a few years it isn't very fresh in my mind. What I will never forget is the way that Dr. Snyder cared about me enough to take time out of her schedule to help me make up my schoolwork. It may have seemed like a little thing to her, but it was a big thing to me.

Dr. Snyder, you were an amazing professor. If I can become a teacher half as good as you, I know I will have made a difference.