Graduation Speech Essay

I love, love, love optics and now my final class in the optic's sequence, Ophthalmic Optics, is sadly coming to an end. It makes me sad since I'm crazy about optics. I have learned so much, even if my grade does not show it. Nonetheless, Ophthalmic Optics has increased my knowledge and I think it has a lot to due with our professor and how he structured the class. The best professors treat students like people and not numbers they go beyond their call of duty in terms of helping students and holding office hours. They not only motivate students to learn, but teach them how to learn. They do this in a way that is relevant, eloquent, and unforgettable and these are all the traits that are exhibited by my professor.
This is what he needs to know. Your sincere desire to teach and the indisputable love of optometry makes you exceptional. You have the ability to grab and keep a student's attention and transfer complex information. Those who deal with me would say that this a hard thing to do. You are friendly, available, passionate and concerned about your students and optometry as a whole. You encourage students to learn and teach them to try to think critically and not just memorize facts and regurgitate them. You give a mean exam because of the high expectations you have for us (maybe the next one you can please go a little bit easy on us) but you are still able to somehow effortlessly bridge the gap between theory and clinic. I greatly appreciate how the course material was organized and positioned. In addition, having the concepts interconnected helped me tremendously. Frequently, I have difficulties with this and lose a lot precious study time.
Furthermore, this optic's course created a sense of community and belonging because of my study group. I love my study group. I really do. I recruited my first member literally by tapping her on the shoulder one day after class and said, "Do you want to be in a study group?" And the rest was history. We recruited some others and we have been one, big happy optometry school family ever since. However, I will say this the bigger the group, the more room there is for goofing around and falling off task. Nonetheless, we tried not to and we tried to motivate each other more, particularly when we needed it the most. One of the best parts about having a study group is that whatever topic one of us needed help with or wanted to go over, someone in the group would be willing to help. We are a team, and like all teams, no woman gets left behind. I will miss our group number 30.
I really wanted to do well, to show how I appreciate the time and effort that my professor put into making us great optometrists. Maybe one day I will, but until then I'll just keep driving him a little crazy.