Robert Hage As A Mentor

In life there is always a person, or role model that you will look up to and admire. A person may admire their role model, or mentor, because of their looks, wit, or even general personality. No matter who you are there is always someone that you attempt to emulate in some way, shape, or form throughout your life. There is no limit to the amount of role models one person can have. There may only be one person whose ideas you look at and agree with whole heartedly, or you may take portions from a vast number of others in order to create your own unique persona, and ideas. For myself, a prominent mentor was my high school Chemistry and Physics teacher, Mr. Robert Hage.

I admired my Chemistry teacher not for his thinning white hair, or for that
Robert Hage lived an expansive life that led him though a great number of careers including a Musician, Chemist, Physicist, Author, High School teacher, and finally, a mentor. Through this vast professional history he showed a great passion for everything he had done, and in doing so gained a large amount of knowledge, in which he would pass on to his students. This is what I admired most about Mr. Robert Hage; I admired his knowledge and passion of all things he
I was at an age where I had not yet taken a stance on any real issues but always sat uncomfortably on the fencepost. When I found myself pondering serious life questions, such as religion, he showed me answers through science and that it was perfectly fine not to accept a religion at all as long as you could provide evidence to support your claims. This was a new concept that had never been provided for me, and best of all it wasn't force fed to me. When I questioned politics he presented the strengths of a liberal standpoint, but all the while letting me know that as long as I could justify my ideas, it was alright to take whatever standpoint I wanted. Although, with every path that was opened, he always told the group in which it was presented to, not to just blindly accept what he said and run with it, but to examine both sides carefully and choose which you thought was the right one. With not only a rekindled interest in science, I was also left with the new interest of rhetoric and debate. With Mr. Hage's encouragement I joined the high school debate team. When the season came for debate matches to begin; Robert Hage had some more advice for me which was, it is important to know how to argue your side, but more important to know how the opponent will argue theirs, and the best strategy is to beat them with their own words and facts. I will never forget these