When I messaged Cole Freeman, a Columbia College senior, on LinkedIn during spring break, I had no expectation of receiving a response. I couldn’t fathom how a portfolio manager at Columbia Lion Fund, president of the investment banking division at Columbia Alpha Partners, wide receiver for the Columbia football team, and incoming analyst at J.P. Morgan could spare even a second to answer, let alone sit down with me. Yet Freeman responded in under two hours, and before I knew it, had beaten me to sending a Google Calendar invite.

Before speaking with Professor Jae Woo Lee, I had gotten to know him through dozens of campus message board posts and professor reviews of his infamous course, Advanced Programming. According to a CULPA review with 140 upvotes, there is a “soul-sucking, inhumane, pedagogical vileness and borderline insanity that occupies the mind of one Jae Woo Lee.” He is a “God,” per another review with 56 upvotes, or, actually, “not just a god, he is a Three-Wolf-Moon shirt on steroids.” Lee’s presence on campus is nearly mythological.