An Ode to a Special Teacher
Who Impacted my life long ago
Robert Reich has written extensively about how one of his teachers (Alice Camp) changed the trajectory of his life.
As school begins anew across the country, I want to share my sweet memory of being a student in Dr. Max Sobel’s Calculus 1 class at Montclair State College in the Spring of 1977.
After graduating high school, I escaped from my childhood home, where I suffered extreme emotional and psychological trauma for many years. My family’s dysfunction was compounded by the sudden death of my 14-year-old sister when I was 12. I spent the first two years of post-high school on a wild journey of self-discovery that was both destructive and painful. I had no vision of my future, no idea of what I could or wanted to be.
I enrolled in Montclair State College starting the Fall semester of 1976. I took a variety of classes with the hope of discovering a passion and an identity. During my first semester, I took an elementary statistics course that was a lot of fun. Based on that success, I enrolled in Dr. Sobel’s Calculus I class after spending Christmas break reviewing high-school algebra.
That Calculus class was the start of what would become a significant part of my life’s story. Dr. Sobel’s joy for mathematics was infectious, and I fell in love with the subject. One day in the middle of the semester, I noticed a relationship between two concepts that Dr. Sobel aptly named “Audree’s Theorem.” He referred to it several times throughout the semester. I decided at that moment to get a Ph.D. in Mathematics and continue these exciting discoveries.
I graduated from Montclair State summa cum laude in the spring of 1979 with a BS in Mathematics. My self-esteem was higher than ever, and I had a vision of my future that I so badly wanted and needed. I applied for and got accepted into multiple Ph.D. programs in mathematics, some with scholarships and grants.
I look back at “Audree’s Theorum,” coined by Dr. Max Sobel, as a pivotal moment for my self-esteem and all my future successes. Thank you, Dr. Sobel.
