Professor Feedback

I really wonder about certain members of the faculty. I’m told that the insanity and strangeness is par for the course in most universities (hello, tenure!), but I must have been very lucky as an undergraduate because I did not have any professors in my major who were anything less than brilliant. Some were better teachers than others, but they were all incredibly intelligent and well-versed in their field. I can’t really say much about other departments, since I didn’t really have many professors in the gen ed classes—mostly TAs and adjuncts. But even there, most of them (with a few notable exceptions) were very capable. And thinking about it now, I must say that the few times I took real courses outside my major, the professors who taught them were great. The only times I ever had any really negative experiences was with TAs. So, to sum up that confusing paragraph: Profs in undergrad good, TAs sometimes good, sometimes bad.

But really, I just don’t understand how some of these people at Law School manage to find their way out the front door and into school. The man whose class I am in right now is walking around with his left front shirttail untucked and his tie is crooked. I wish that I could say that this is the exception, but with this guy, it’s more the rule. And the fact that the tie more or less matches the shirt means that it’s a good day for him.

Wardrobe issues aside, he struggles with the simplest technology. For example, the wireless mike that is supposed to make him audible for the students in the back rows of this full lecture room. There are 123 students in the class, we can’t all sit in the front row. In fact, I sit in the fourth row, and I can’t always hear him. I can’t imagine what the people in rows 9-11 hear (or more accurately, don’t hear). It’s one of those clip on mikes like people wear on TV talk shows. It’s not too hard: you flick the “on” switch, stick the receiver in your back pocket (or clipped on the back waistband of your pants—you’ve seen people on TV do it) and clip the mike part to your shirt. He’s got the mike clipped to his tie, which is an acceptable variation, except that he’s also got the receiver in his shirt pocket. Which means that any time he moves in such a way that the tie swings to the left, the room is treated to the squeal of feedback. He can’t figure out why it happens (and this happens every. single. day. ), so he just turns the mike off. And in order to turn the mike off, he pulls the receiver out of his pocket (to flip the switch on the back) and in doing so, practically holds it on top of the mike, bringing the squealing feedback to a fevered pitch. You’d think that he’d make the connection.
And the best part of all is that it costs me $67 for each wasted class hour listening to his blather and the feedback of the microphone.