Career

As a kid I had a lot of teachers who would yell & scream & scold students for all sorts of reasons. I had a wonderful second grade teacher Mrs.Carvalho. She really validated my curiosity in a way other teachers had not. The intermediate school I went to for one year (3rd) was not well funded & my hometown has quite a history of corruption. I just found that school to be brutal, it felt like the streets of a city with a high crime rate (at least for a sheltered, sensitive only child like myself). I switched to the only private school nearby - it happened to be a catholic school. I made a lot of long time friends there but I'll be honest although it was a much more nurturing & small environment - it had it's quirks or strange feelings being such a sheltered environment. I suppose I just mean the subculture among the students was quite different - perhaps more nerdy (which I enjoyed but maybe wasn't used to fully yet). In 9th grade I had for the first time mostly male teachers - I loved pretty much all of them. I don't know why but it was easier to connect with them & maybe I associated them less with the emotional trauma of many of my elementary school teachers.

I never studied physics seriously beyond freshman year of high school, but I had an amazing teacher who used extremely structured worksheets to teach the scientific method and basic mathematical reasoning. That experience stuck with me far more than the actual formulas did. It made science feel logical, methodical, and approachable in a way that I still appreciate.