It is hard to be an apprentice to an unfriendly professor, or even one whose warmth or tolerance wears thin when the going gets hard for the student ….

One is never just a teacher: One is always - even if not consciously - an advocate of a point of view, a critic of certain positions, an exemplar of ….

The need here is professional closeness tempered by emotional distance..

One may have a right to be unconventional and even eccentric, so long as one is fully competent and a decent person; but one's ideal as a professor s….