In college, I took a class called Philosophy of Physics. Never liked physics, but it sounded cool. It ended up being one of my best classes, so I was thinking of blogging about quantum this weekend (I like the word "quantum" by the way). Quickly, my thoughts moved to another subject.
The best thing about that class was my professor, Father Ron Anderson. He was undoubtedly one of the most passionate, intelligent, open-minded, mild-mannered and articulate people I have ever met. He truly cared about his students.
At one point when I was enrolled in the class, I was in a "funk". It was the first semester of senior year. I was having a difficult time finding a job, and I was skipping a lot of my classes and not really doing anything useful with my time. I skipped Father Anderson's class (at the time, I felt awful about it because of the great deal of respect I had for him; it was already a really small class, and it only met once a week).
So, I emailed the weekly paper to him and created an excuse for missing class. He offered for me to come into his office on another day to talk about the readings. I accepted and when I got there, we didn't really talk about the paper. I think he could sense I was struggling, and we had a conversation about what my aspirations were and what I wanted to do with my life (the kind of conversation that makes you think "why does this person care so much about me and my happiness?"). I was blown away by his thoughtfulness.
After this conversation, things went back to normal. I started attending class again. That was the only time I had an extended one-on-one talk with him.
In class, Father Anderson used to go around the room and ask each student for their opinions on the week's reading. I was always nervous because I was often ill-prepared, didn't fully understand the topics, and am not the most eloquent speaker. What I realized from this activity was that Father Anderson was an outstanding listener. Every time someone spoke, he understood their thoughts, expanded on them, and offered suggestions to that person. He quelled all of the anxiety I had and made my thoughts seem relevant. In addition, Father Anderson would send emails to the class about articles he thought were interesting and maintained a website with links relating to different philosophical subjects - if there was a man who lived for others, in my mind, it was him.
About a year after I graduated, I was looking at the BC philosophy website and learned that Father Anderson passed away at the age of 57. It was unexpected and truly shocked me. I was upset about it for a while and it really made me question what I was doing with my life. How could this happen to such a great man? Even with limited personal contact outside of class, Father Anderson was instrumental in shaping my life. Why didn't I thank him for any of the things he did for me and others? I should have done more. I will never be as great of a person as he was.
No comments:
Post a Comment