Marshall Ferguson

Marshall Ferguson was the youngest child of Colin and Louise Ferguson. He was a perpetual student having repeatedly changed his major, both due to academic difficulties, changing interests and to delay graduating. His father had promised to support him while he was working on an undergraduate degree so it was in Marshall's best interest to delay graduating as long as possible especially given the poor job market. While Colin had expressed his unhappiness, he continued, for the moment, to foot the bill.

Marshall had started studying engineering at University of California, Santa Barbara like his brother but found calculus to be too difficult and so changed to history in his sophomore year when he landed on academic probation. He was especially interested in Ancient Greek but to do well you needed to learn the language. Marshall found that as difficult as calculus and so switched again to film studies. Thereafter, he switched once again to creative writing, this time to deliberately avoid graduating.