Enough with school already!
So I thought when I walked down the steps from my commencement stage, bachelor's degree in hand. Actually, that idea had lodged itself in my mind a good while before. No matter how boring summer vacation became, the phrase "back to school sale" struck terror in my heart.
Fortunately, not everyone feels the same way. Some people can't stop being students. Education is so important they spend their life in school, making acquiring—and sharing—knowledge their vocation.
I admire their energy, I admire their tenacity and I admire their patience, both with students who don't share their enthusiasm and with people like me who seek to tell others what they're doing and end up saying "huh?" a lot in interviews.
But what I admire most is their generosity. H. L. Mencken got a laugh with, "Those who can—do. Those who can't—teach," but he was wrong. We don't learn entirely on our own any more than we live entirely on our own.
At FPU, our foundation is Christ. Our heart is the interaction between student and teacher, and our spirit is the curiosity that characterizes all students—whichever side of the classroom they inhabit.