As I am setting up my eportfolio and adding papers and important information... I am begining to realize that much of what I learned here at Pace has not been entirely textbook related. I have read my books, and took notes on lectures, but I would have nothing without the teachers that taught the classes, that assigned the books.

All of my teachers have affected me in some way. I read them like I read the books they assign and I wonder about their lives and their interests. However, one professor has gone above and beyond my expectations for inspiration. Dr Reza Afshari is a history teacher at Pace University in Pleasantville, and I have taken three classes with him. Modern China, my first class, was actually one I dreaded. I had no interest in China, and knew nothing about it to begin the class with, making me feel entirely insecure. The second class was Israel and Palestine: The Challenge, another topic that I knew nothing about. Both of these classes have become my favorite that I have taken here at Pace. Learning something new had something to do with it, but the way Dr Afshari taught them, presented them to me, made them unforgetable. We had a textbook and a nonfiction book, written by real people who lived in the respective environments of the topic of each class. My third class, History of Human Rights, I was more prepared for, and knew I would love it just like the other two.

Dr. Afshari has taught me the most interesting subjects, but also the most important things about myself. He frequently tells us that we are not at the collegiate level, that our writing is not up to par, that nothing is important to us. He is sarcastic and pessimistic, but his heart is like gold. I thought I could challenge myself to make my writing to his standards, but I couldn't just try harder. I had to learn how to learn from Afshari. If you are expecting a normal college class, you'd be in the wrong classroom with Afshari, and you'd be lost. To learn from him is the best lesson I have learned here at Pace, and in doing so, I have grown into the collegiate student that he expected of me.

My education would have been entirely incomplete without the guidance of Dr Reza Afshari. His brilliance is astounding and his personality, well, that's even better.

I also wrote a paper on him, if you'd like to see more. It's in my Academic Section!