Conversations with Whitney

I found this on the computer, just a little bit more about my daughter. I hope she continues to grow the way she has the first 14 years of her life. I take nothing for granted in this world, but she really has potential to be a stand out person. (She is already, I guess I should say stand out adult).
Whitney Baker
Lyman
Honors English 1
August 23, 2010
The Time I Judged My Teacher
“What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” These words were said by Ralph Waldo Emerson. What is the meaning though? To me it means that we always judge people and experiences by what we know is bad about them instead of the good things we can find out about them. I have judged someone before I know them because I didn't like the way she look or things I had heard about her in the past.
People would tell me stories about this teacher that I was going to have. They said that she didn't like freshmen. I though she was going to be really weird and mean. I didn't really want to be in her class when I heard these things about her. I thought I would really hate her because of what other people told me.
When I got into her class I also judged her on her appearance. I thought she looked kind of like a hippie. She always wore clothes that reminded me of hippies. She smelled weird too, like incense mixed with old lady perfume. Every time she walked by I could smell it and I hated it. It also seemed to me like she thought that she was too good for us. She just acted really stuck up.
I told my friends that also had her all of the weird things I heard about her too. I made her sound like a bad teacher. We would talk about how weird she was when we weren't in her class. Her class was like a joke to most of us. We never took it or her seriously.
After a while of being in her class, I learned that most of the things I had heard about her weren't true. She really wasn't that bad of a teacher in my opinion. I had judged her before I knew her because of other peoples' bad experiences in her class. I actually started liking her class and looked forward to it.