I wish somebody would have warned me what I was about to walk into on my first day of Organizational Communications. OC was the most exciting class I have ever been in.

I was greeted by Mr. Freeburg saying, “Hello. Here is a note card. Please write down your name and your favorite smell, so I can get to know you better.” Confused--I wrote, “the smell outside after it rains.”
After seeing my card, he screams, “look over here”! He then ran to the whiteboard at the front of the room like a kid running towards an ice cream truck. He wrote, “Petrichor.” “Petrichor,” he says, “is the smell outside after it rains.” Amazed, and still a little bit confused, I knew I was in for a fun semester.

The best thing Mr. Freeburg did was make class interesting. English has consistently been my most hated subject from the first day I waltzed into kindergarten. However, I loved every minute of Mr. Freeburg’s 11th grade English class. I looked forward to it every day, because it didn’t feel like an English class (or a class at all). He created an incredibly laid back atmosphere, yet we still got our work done, simply because we loved coming to class.

Instead of him boringly teaching us random facts we would never remember, he had the class teach the lessons. This was like killing two birds with one stone since the class was about presenting as well as English. These groups would be assigned different sections of the chapter and we would make a presentation to teach the entire class--and we were encouraged to add humor.  Instead of hearing a teacher talk in a monotone voice for 40 minutes, the time was filled with puns and jokes. This made the class fun. And, if a group missed a key point, Mr. Freeburg would fill us in. It was the perfect system. By the end of the semester, my presentations were amazing, and I no longer felt nervous presenting in front of a crowd. I was like Ryan Seacrest every time I went to the front of the room.

My first group presentation was a skit about communications between bullies and students.  However, we thought that it would be funny if, in the skit, we portrayed Mr. Freeburg as a nerd and have the bullies make fun of him. For all six minutes we made playful jabs at Mr. Freeburg’s favorite sayings and hobbies. I played Mr. Freeburg. I wore a tucked in collared shirt, had a calculator sticking out of my pocket, and calculus books in my hands. As you can expect, the bully knocked the books out of my hands. The line that followed was, “Can you calculate how to pick those books up?” He loved it. He even posted our script on his “Wall of Fame” which is his bulletin board full of student-made masterpieces. He loved when students got creative and shared his interest in English.

The best thing that Mr. Freeburg did was make English class awesome. And this is something I have never thought was possible. It is because of him that I now enjoy going to my English class every day, that I enjoy giving presentations, and that I know what the smell outside after it rains is called.