If you try to “keep your faith” in college, you’ll likely fail. “Keeping your faith” is a defensive position in a game of stamina with the odds stacked against you. You don’t prioritize something by waiting to see what happens with everything else first so you can make the important thing “fit.” That’s the biggest mistake when it comes to developing your faith in college. The first and most critical step is to make basic, intentional commitments right from the start.
…This is of course part of the culture at Notre Dame—the cost for all the extraordinary benefits that the football program affords the university and its community (and they are extraordinary, not only in financial terms but in communal terms also). But the sequence of three straight weekends at the very start of the semester has been, in my view and the view of the students I talked to yesterday, unfair and actually rather cruel to our students. We have not put them in a position to start strong this year and to set a foundation for success. Instead, they’re already behind and playing catch-up. …
