Professor McPherson

I’d like to introduce you to Professor MacPherson. He’s an interesting guy. Decent looking, snappy dresser, funny... in fact, a little too funny. You see, Professor MacPherson thinks he’s still a student himself. He’d like us all to think he’s the funniest, the hippest professor—Mr. Popularity. He’s also the only professor of his particular ethnicity on staff. He often sprinkles his lectures with hip-hop oriented slang that borders on ludicrous for a man of his age and occupation. For example, today he wanted to know the tax consequences for a guy who sold a famous-for-some-record-breaking-thing baseball for “three LARGE”. This irritates me. It’s almost as if he thinks he has to “keep it real” to prove himself to the students who share his ethnicity, which is ridiculous, because he’s obviously extremely intelligent. But occasionally this habit is unintentionally funny, as on the day that he muttered under his breath, “You gotta take da marginal tax rate inna account for damn sure”.

Professor MacPherson is so busy being funny and ripping on the Yankees that class lecture is nothing more than an irritating afterthought. There are approximately 125 students in the course and you could, on any given day, walk up to at least 90 of them and get the same answer to the question “What do we need to read for class today/next time?”, namely, “I dunno.” Class is scheduled to last for 100 minutes plus a 10 minute break. He has never once kept us for the full class period. We always take a break that lasts closer to 15 (or even 20) minutes and class ends somewhere between 75 and 85 minutes. Not that I’m complaining about this. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that this class is so disorganized and aimless that it’s painful to be there. It might not be so bad if the Ethernet connection at my seat worked, since then I could escape into the joy of the internet. Unfortunately, I chose my seat based on its location in the room. That was back when I was still naively expecting that the class would be interesting and I would learn a lot. Now I wish I’d chosen my seat based on which seat had a functioning Ethernet port. Live and learn, I guess.

The thing is, I don’t dislike Professor MacPherson. I would absolutely invite him to go out drinking with the group. But that’s kind of the problem—he constantly acts like the kind of guy you’d want to go out and drink with. In a way, it robs him of the authority that he should have if he wants to control a classroom. And let me tell you, there are few classes so uncontrolled as his. It’s not that there’s total anarchy or anything. But people don’t come to class prepared. People leave at break. When he calls on someone in class, he is more likely to get a smart remark about the Yankees than a straight answer to the question he asked. And in an astounding moment of candidness, he told us that he “doesn’t like to ruin people’s GPAs” so he rarely gives anything less than a B “unless you just ain’t tryin’” (and I swear, that’s a direct quote). Which is great for me, but good Lord, why would you remove any motivation that might have remained to go out and find other resources in an attempt to learn the subject matter? The whole point of taking the course (aside from the fact that it’s four desperately needed credit hours) was to learn the material in preparation for the bar exam. And yes, I know I shouldn’t rely on others to supply motivation for me, but I need some help here—the lack of reward for your effort in law school will drain even the most motivated of scholars.

So, today I’ll sit in his class for another two hours (and by two hours, I mean 75 or 80 minutes) of my life that I’ll never get back. I won’t learn anything. I won’t be taught anything. I probably won’t even take notes. I *will* however, fantasize about a world in which my understanding of Federal Income Taxation and the legal theory behind it would be increased by my presence and work in Professor McPherson’s class.