P-Star, the man, the myth, the legend.
You never know what you’re going to get when you’re with Pierce McInturff, a man of many names and many talents.
If you knew Pierce when he was a freshman, you probably know him by his nickname PMac. “I had this t-shirt that I wore out the first night of welcome week that said it and then all of my good friends started calling me PMac,” he said laughing.
His most famous nickname, and my personal favorite, is P-star because he dots the “i” in his name with a star, even on his driver’s license. Not only is this nickname the funniest, but it also captures the eccentric essence that is Pierce McInturff.
Hailing from a town on the border of Boston, Massachusetts, Pierce is a junior who jumped around different schools and programs at SCU. He is currently pursuing a political science major with minors in Spanish and music. “My roommate actually told me to try political science because he thought I would be good at it,” he said.
Throughout his life and education, Pierce has spoken a lot of Spanish. When he was in high school, he went on a two-week immersion trip with other students to Mexico. They all stayed with different host families and had the chance to go to class and travel around. Pierce hasn’t had the opportunity to study abroad at Santa Clara, but if he could travel anywhere, he would go to Africa.
“I haven’t been able to travel around much in life and it would be cool to travel around Africa because it’s so different from the US and it’s more like the rest of the world. I feel like people forget that there’s a whole world outside of the United States and a whole world outside of Santa Clara,” Pierce remarked.
Outside of academics, Pierce participates in many activities pursuing his passions; including swim team, jazz combo band, and the acapella group AudioSync.
Pierce loves fitness and joined the club swim team on a whim as a sophomore because it sounded cool. “I’ve never swam before and it was a good and different way to get exercise without the risk of hurting my body,” he said.
Pierce’s love for music led him to declare a minor and to join two on-campus groups. The first is the jazz combo band where he plays guitar. He loves being a part of this group because he gets to improvise whatever riffs come to mind on the guitar. While he plays in the jazz combo group, Pierce’s favorite style of music to play is alternative or classic rock inspired by the great Jimi Hendrix.
The second music group Pierce is a member of is AudioSync. “It’s always nerve-wracking because I feel like I never know the song as well as I think I should, but then we get up on stage for the concert and everyone just kills it and it’s so much fun. I love getting to start from scratch and learn new songs that we haven’t done before,” Pierce said.
After spending the last two years living in the infamous Swig, Pierce has finally moved on in life and lives in a house off campus with his Kappa Sigma brothers. Surprisingly, Pierce finds it harder to get work done in his house than when he lived in Swig. As we’re sitting on the stage in his backyard, there are two matching scars noticeable on Pierce’s left arm from when he fell off a skateboard, broke his arm, and needed metal plates. And, if you’re wondering like I was, no, TSA does not stop him while he’s going through security.
One of my favorite questions to ask during these interviews is regarding spirit-animals and Pierce’s response is one of the best ones to date- “Oh shoot, I actually know this one!” Well, he couldn’t remember what his actual spirit animal was, but he said he wished a black panther was his spirit animal because they are “big, powerful, and limber on their toes and are able to be stealthy.”
We may not be able to tell where Pierce “P-Star” McInturff will be in five years, but we can be sure that he will not be bored or wasting time in a job that he is not passionate about. He will be living life to the fullest.