You’ll forget most of what teachers taught you. You won’t forget which ones were patient with you.

Content fades and treatment does not. The specific lessons leave almost entirely within a few years, while the memory of being given time, or of being denied it, stays available for decades. What a person was like with you turns out to be the durable part of any teaching.

Tell a teacher who was patient with you that you remember it, in a note or in person, because they almost certainly do not know. Then look at how you are with whoever is behind you in something: a younger kid, a new coworker, a sibling. That is the part they will keep.