That’s the new president of my university: Fr. Paul Fitzgerald. He spoke yesterday with some of the Arts & Sciences faculty. Someone asked him about his teaching philosophy (Fr. Fitzgerald demanded he be given an appointment in the Theology and Religious Studies faculty). This isn’t a direct quote, but here’s what he said:
Number one, you have to love the student. Because if you give love, the student can learn and grow. Otherwise we just end up trying to impress or dazzle them with what we know.
I’m trying to learn these days about love, and this was good advice. It immediately brought to mind some work of contemporary essayists, and also a lot of millennial aphorisms like BE AMAZING and Dear Sugar‘s now proverbial WRITE LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER.
Let’s mince words: a mother fucker is a disgusting person. Why would anybody want to write like one?
No mother fucker fucks out of love.