Let’s take a minute to talk about teachers. A real, 60 second minute.

Yes, those people who painstakingly taught you how to write your own name, do cursive (which I’m sure they now teach on iPads) and basic addition and subtraction. From your pre-school teacher to your favourite PhD toting master’s professor we all have educators we can look back on and appreciate for the impact they have had on our lives as students. Coming into Sauder from my undergraduate degree in Political Science from here at UBC I knew that the quality of the faculty at this school was incredibly high. I had the most incredible professors during my undergrad, with the exception of the occasional research based one who couldn’t care less about actually relaying information to students. You’re always worried about what your professor will be like on the first day of class – it really makes all the difference. Let me just say the first day of every new period has not not failed to disappoint.

The Sauder School of Business is known for many things, but man can their teachers teach. These people are highly accomplished in their chosen field to the point where you have moments in class where you sit back and mumble under your breath things like “genius”. Those are called lightbulb moments and they happen to me all the time. I just want to sit there and soak up everything that they know into my brain, as if being in the same room as these people will make me like them by osmosis. I was truly amazed when I realized I had learned basic finance and accounting, and I’m ashamed to say a lot of it had nothing to do with me. It had to do with my professors, people who made the subjects I was struggling to learn as digestible and learnable as possible. Real teachers, not just researchers who lecture on occasion but people who educate and do it really, really well.

These professors care about your success and learning more than you do at times, and they are of such high quality that you wish you could sit in on their classes until you were 80. You come to appreciate anyone who is truly great at something and I have come to appreciate the educators who have made this program truly great.

Until next time,

Julia

ca.linkedin.com/in/juliashepherd/

Feature Image from: http://www.archdaily.com/257561/sauder-school-of-business-acton-ostry-architects/