I would like to thank all the teachers who guided my education throughout my days in school.

Although most of my teachers impacted me in some way, three teachers come to mind as people who impacted me the most.

A grade-school teacher named Mr. Martens showed me more patience while teaching me math than I could ever show anyone.

To this day I hate math but if I had to, I could work my way through a FOIL problem and I would think of him every step of the way- first, inner, outer and last.

Thank you.

Mrs. Hengen, my high school psychology teacher, taught me the basics about the human mind, but more importantly related to students as people. Yes, she was shaping young minds, but she did it with a great respect for the students. To this day, she was one of the best listeners I have ever met.

She was the first person to show me the movie “Roots” and openly talk about racism.

Another thing I took from her was an off the cuff conversation about marriage. She said, “I will personally hunt any one of you down and give you a personal counseling session if you marry before you are 30. You don’t know yourself, so how can you give to another.”

I know that doesn’t apply to everyone, but it did apply to me. So thank you Mrs. Hengen. I am 29 years old and will not be married before I am 30. I am just now figuring out who I am.

And last but not least, my U.S. history teacher Mr. Murphy got me interested in politics, the media and history. His laid back curriculum allowed students to choose from a variety of topics to research and write about. Through those presentations, I learned more about U.S. involvement in domestic and international issues than I did in any other class before I attended college.

Thank you for all of your knowledge and encouragement.

Dave Mason's English lit class in college helped me appreciate "Great Expectations," a book I HATED in high school.

Mason was one of my professors at Moorhead State University. He is also a very accomplished, prize-winning poet. He left MSU years ago, and I'm not sure what he's up to now, but I'm sure whatever it is, it's awesome.

When he taught, he helped us to hear the poetry in the words - the musical quality of the writing. I remember him reciting Yeats poems in class (he didn't even have to look at the text) and I remember hearing the "music" of Yeats' mind like I was listening to a song.

"Come away, oh human child, to the waters and the wild, with a fairy, hand in hand, for the world's more full of weeping than you can understand." (I typed that without having to look it up. Thanks, Dave.)

I loved Gary Litt!! What a small world. The MSU English department had some great professors. Lin Enger also was a good one - I took a screenwriting class with him.