Professors are not perfect, but it is not perfection that fosters a healthy learning environment or instills passion in students. I have had many professors who gave assignments that were too difficult, who wrote exams impossible to pass, or taught in a way that was confusing and overwhelming. However, despite their flaws, I have had many professors whose redeeming qualities have earned my respect and admiration, and I will remember them fondly for the positive impact they have had on my education and my career.
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I am a fan of humility and a firm believer that actions speak louder than words.

I had this one professor who taught us how to apply a set of thermodynamics equations. He explained to us that these equations had been around for 109 years without any basis of proof for why they work. They simply existed, like an apple appearing out of thin air without ever having grown on a tree. Bizarre. My professor then causally mentioned that some guy figured out how to derive these equations a few years ago.

I didn’t think much of the discussion until I was reading my textbook and discovered that my professor was the person who proved the formulas. He did not write our textbook, but he was cited for many formulas, graphs, and experiments discussed in it. He was so prominent in his field yet never mentioned it in class.
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I never really understood how learning and teaching styles could clash until I took Thermodynamics II.
I had a professor whose approach to asking questions on exams completely eluded my way of thinking and my methods of problem solving. My brain was useless against anything he asked no matter how well I understood the material. He even told me in his office hours that I knew thermodynamics exceedingly well but was terrible at applying it.

I spent the semester frustrated, questioning how I could memorize everything in the notes and the textbook and still not be able to do well on an exam. I remember being infuriated with my professor, but as I spent more time with him, I couldn’t stay angry. He was so sweet and patient and one of the most genuine professors I have ever met.

I spent the last two weeks of the semester in his office determined to do well on the final, and he never once got annoyed with how frequently I knocked on his door. I passed the class because of how patient he was with me.
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I hate group projects. I get that as an engineer the rest of my career will consist of group projects, but at least deficient contributors can be fired. In school, you are sometimes simply stuck with bad group members who drag down your semester grade.

For my senior lab, I was put into a group of three which was smaller than the typical group of four to five students, and of course I ended up with a team member who refused to contribute. Ever. My other teammate and I finally reached a breaking point with our four- to five-person workload, so we sought out our professor. His response to the situation was to apologize for our teammate, remove him from our group, and extend all our due dates for the rest of the semester to allow us time to rest and do well in other classes.

His understanding and kindness relieved so much stress in my final semester.
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I am a huge nerd. My physics professor was a bigger nerd. As many students know, Texas A&M physics is notorious for being extremely difficult. However, what many students don’t know is that it can also be fascinating.

I had a professor who loved to demonstrate the law of physics through his nerdy interests. He would calculate for us how many Yoda’s it would take to power the world for a day, how much electricity Magneto would need to harness to lift a quarter, and how fast a dying star spins depending on its mass. Through these methods of teaching, we not only realized how powerful Yoda is, how impossible Magneto’s superpower is, or how epic our universe is, but we learned how to convert force applied into energy required, how electricity and magnetism were related, and how changing radii impact centrifugal forces.

He was the best professor I have ever taken. He was passionate about physics and his students, and he made every class one worth attending, one worth heeding, and one worth remembering.