This is my first draft for my memoir. It represents an attempt to write without self-editing, a habit that I try to discourage in students but indulge in myself. As such, it is not something I would normally publish. However,I felt it was more important to show how even experienced writers create inadequate first drafts.

He spun on his unevenly worn heel and answered the question. I don’t remember who asked Mr. Watson the question, and I don’t even remember what the question was about. As he spun around, though, everything seemed to slow down and I had what could only be called an epiphany: he loved what he was doing, and it seemed like something that might be fun.

It is from that moment that I date my own desire to be an English teacher. As it was, I brushed aside the idea immediately. I was, after all, only a junior in high school. Thinking about being a high school teacher while in high school seemed somehow unseemly. But I knew what he did helped people—daily—and the thought of helping people every single day appealed to me.

Other teachers fostered my interest in reading and writing, but it was Mr. Watson who gave me the first idea that I might actually be good at it. At the time, I fancied myself a poet, and Mr. Watson read page after page of my adolescent pathos and made detailed comments about what I was doing well.

Mr. Watson was the first male teacher to really instill in me a sense of passion about one’s work. He was available for help at all times. The world was his classroom, and he never drew a line between his “teacher” self and his “personal” self. One evening, my friend and I bumped into him at the public library. We were doing research for a presentation in his class, and he ended up helping us for well over half an hour that evening, on his personal time.

The biggest regret in my life is that I never had the opportunity to tell him, “I am a teacher because of you.”