First Impressions Essay, Research Paper

My first impression of Miss Vicki was a highly authorative figure towering over me. Her voice boomed and the earth shook whenever she marched. She seemed like such an unapproachable and distant person. That was in the first year of High School. She was my Literature teacher then.

During my first year in school, she struck terror in my heart. And everyone else’s of course. The mere mention of her name made the most unruly classes silent. The birds stopped screeching. Even the earth felt still. The omniscent presence of rumours stating that she didn’t like Junior High students was not much of a help.

Nevertheless, the 2 years of Junior High passed by rather quickly. Soon, I was promoted to Senior High class. I had worked hard and gotten the subject combination that I wished for. Together with a bunch of old friends, I soon settled down in class comfortably.

As fate would have it, she was fortunate enough to be my form teacher that year. I almost choked in alarm when I heard the news. This time round, however, I resolved not to cower in terror whenever she was near. I decided to face the fact that we were going to meet each other for the next 365 days. Instead of trying too hard to lick her boots, I tried my best to be my natural self in front of her.

Still, I could not shake off the ice-cold image that she possessed in my heart. True, her corney jokes sometimes sent me into frolicking laughter, yet at other times these jokes simply fell flat the moment she uttered them. My lovely class, however was always ready to laugh at the right time and place of her amusing stories. Afterall, we would not want to run the risk of her temper erupting in front of us like Mount Saint Helens spewing molten rock and breathing fire.

Alas, life was not to remain boring and nondescript.

One day we recieved news that Miss Vicki was to leave Singapore for the Philippines where she would participate in a voluntary teaching programme for the poor. We did not know what to think actually.

All of us cried at the airport.

Back at school, we got another teacher for English lessons. But that is another story altogether…