I can directly attribute my academic success in life to one teacher of mine. One. His name was (and is) Dr. Doll, and he teaches both AP European History and AP US History at my school. When I met him, he taught the history class all freshmen take: World History. In middle school, I sailed academically. I was the smartest kid in any room; I took pride in that. The library was my favorite room in the school, and I could get away with reading throughout every class. I assumed the same would be true of high school. Admittedly, it was for the most part. Until Dr. Doll. The room was barren: desks, two whiteboards, and brown IKEA shelves. At the board stood a man that looked like someone took the average of every high school history teacher and then made that average teach history. He started the very first class I had with him by assigning us a term paper for the end of the year and then lecturing for the next hour. The only detail about Dr. Doll himself that I could glean was that he never dotted his i's in his handwriting. Some parts of his class were easy. In class we went over the reading from the previous night. The homework was a series of questions about the reading we just reviewed, and while I'm still mad that it was always due at 9:00 PM, there was a rhythm to it. Dr. Doll always graded harshly with his own combination of acronyms and ellipsis. I was one of the lucky ones. I averaged an 87 on every homework assignment with minimal encounters of "mis... CO" (missing continuity with previous time period). But there was still the term paper. I thought it would be easy. It was not. In hindsight, choosing to write a paper on all of India's history as a colony of Great Britain with no experience writing multi-page essays was a bad idea. A worse idea was to put it off because everything in school came easy to me. The first draft was due in February, and I didn't finish the essay. Partially from the workload, partially confusion on formatting, and partially because I just froze. It was too much and I spent the night trying to write while having a panic attack. All I could think about was the people I was disappointing. I only got a 70% because Dr. Doll liked me. He let me cry in his room, and while I would never describe him as warm, he is phenomenal at stopping tears with terrible jokes. He said I was the best student in his class because of my curiosity. Because I cared about history. I was able to submit a second draft that got me an 80, and after a quarter of grinding, I finished the year with an A. Partially from my first two quarters, but mostly because of the teacher I had. When Dr. Doll switched to Euro and US history, I was lucky enough to get him for APUSH. There was another term paper, another year of "CH... CO...", but it was better. I was prepared, I began writing in my paper in September, and I got a 100 on my paper about the history of the prison system in America. According to Dr Doll, it was exemplary. I will argue that I am exemplary because of Freshman year and the struggle I had at fourteen. I was able to grow and put in the effort. While coal is useful, it needs pressure to be a diamond.