Can I Wear a Backpack Even if I'm a Law Professor?

I have recently ditched my messenger bag for a backpack. Is it okay for a law professor to carry a backpack to school? My wife says I look too much like a student. Now, maybe the backpack doesn’t look all that professorial – and I do want to look professorial – but the backpack is easier on my aching back than the messenger bag. And back problems, it seems to me, are very professorial. Or at least old-sounding.

My wife, Kit, is unconvinced. I explained to her that with a backpack, wearing a suit, I look like Josh Lyman from the West Wing. Kit thinks it is “silly” for me to model my fashion choices after a fictional senior White House staffer.

Kit thinks, instead, that I should model myself after a government counter-terrorist agent who breaks all the rules. That is to say, she only wanted me to carry a messenger bag after Jack Bauer ran around with one in Season Five of 24.

Granted, I’m sure everyone is instantly reminded of Jack Bauer when they see me hobbling to class, bent-spined – and rogueishly good-looking, of course – as I fumble for aspirin in my man-purse, gingerly making my way as I try not to slip on the black ice in front of the library.

I’ve got to tell you, I am truly terrified of falling on the ice. The mid-March thaw in North Dakota brings a fresh film of disgusting black water to every ice-packed sidewalk in town. The last thing I want to do is take a digger in front of a crowd of 1Ls.

Even worse, I’m afraid I may have reached that age where, instead of saying “Professor Johnson fell,” they will say, “Did you hear? Professor Johnson ... ” lowering their voice to a whisper, “had a fall.”

And that’s the last thing I need after a couple of weeks ago, when I badly pulled a muscle in my neck. Do you know how I injured my neck? That the best part. I was – get this – moving to sit down on the couch. Yes. That’s it. MOVING TO SIT DOWN ON THE COUCH.

I was in so much pain I couldn’t move at all for several minutes. You would think, since I’m a torts teacher, I would know enough not to get a soft-tissue injury while I am alone, at my own house, not even holding a product.

So for days I strode around in front of class unable to swivel my head independently of my shoulders. I’m sure THAT looked very professorial.

Comments

[Noname Emanon]

I think that is the problem with today... and especially today's youth. I am speaking of your precious 1L's you are trying so hard not to look like a fool in front of. We all get caught up in the image we need or feel the need to portray of ourselves. What happened to the American ideal of individuality? When did it become necessary to fit in with everyone else? To become what the world calls normal? I say if you want to use a school bag for comfort reasons, or whatever, do it. The thought of the 1L's be darned. I think that when our society is priding itself on our so called royalty such as the "Paris Hilton" crowd, we should be worried. When did we become a society that values mediocrity? It used to be prided when someone had an intellectual thought. Now even our colleges have been dumbed down so that more and more "young adults" can get into and graduate from them. And we wonder why countries trying to find the best and brightest tend to look outside of our country rather than to it like in the days of old. But what does it matter what I think. I am just a crazy 1L watching you with your sprained neck.