Ever since entering into the world of higher education, I have treated professors much like I treat wild animals: I won’t bother them, and hope that they won’t bother me. I have never been the type of person to ask silly questions or offer up crackpot answers during class. I never really felt compelled to contribute to classroom discussions, especially in large classes. I have never sought out a professor for his “wisdom” once the designated class period ended. On the rare occasions when I did have to meet a professor in his or her office, I felt uncomfortable and did my best to end the meeting as quickly as possible. In short, I did my best to blend in as one of the many faces in the crowd, and hoped that they would treat me as such. And for the most part, until this last semester, my strategy worked.
When I was choosing courses for my final round of law school classes, I needed three more hours, and I begrudgingly added Entertainment Law to my schedule. I say begrudgingly because in addition to meeting twice a week at 9:30, I had the prof for Con Law II, and walked away with the opinion that he was a terrible professor. On the other hand, the class didn’t meet on Friday, and Entertainment Law was supposedly this professor’s specialty, since he had worked in the industry both as a performer (in a well-known musical group that did covers of pop songs from the 50’s and 60’s) and on the business side. So I bit the bullet and signed up.
The first few weeks passed without incident, although I did begin to regret taking the course, because I immediately realized that he was the same horrible professor in his supposed specialty as he was in Con Law. What makes him so bad? The list of grievances is long, and any one taken alone isn’t cause for concern; but when taken as a whole, it paints the portrait of a man who has no business making a living as a professor.
His manner of “teaching” is difficult to describe. He doesn’t present himself as a hardass, but rather as your friend. However, his style is passive-aggressive, almost sarcastic, and you never get the feeling that he is actually one of those profs who wants to be everyone’s buddy. It was almost as if he humors you, like when you are subtly making fun of someone to their face, only the other person isn’t aware of it. His attempts at comedy were not funny, nor were they corny enough to garner a mixture of groans and giggles. Rather, when he made a joke, it was met with silence, or perhaps the odd chuckle, because he was simply trying too hard. He blatantly flirted with female students, even giving some of them pet names. He would assign 45 page reading assignments and cover only three of them. He would spend half of the class on a four-line note case and ignore a 15 page Supreme Court opinion on the next page. He seemed to enjoy asking his students lots of questions, although you couldn’t describe him as classically Socratic. It was more like a game of charades, when one person would give the other a clue, and then expect him to figure out the answer by simply motioning his hand in a “let’s go” fashion. In fairness, he wasn’t demanding in the typical sense, and didn’t lay into student who got stuck with one of his vague queries. He did, however, like to pick on certain people in the class, and try to embarrass them. This was where he and I clashed.
Part Two coming later this week
