Rockin' the Suburbs

This title has nothing to do with anything, except the Ben Folds song is in my head.

 

The toughest thing about law school so far has been managing the information feeds.  I have approximately forty seven new websites I have to constantly check to see what’s coming up when for this class, that organization, this Career Development whatever-the-heck.  Each one of them has their own username and password, and keeping them straight is – phoo – a chore.  I spent this evening trying to figure out a system to manage, filter, and automatically feed this info to myself.  I was unsuccessful.  But tomorrow, once more unto the breach.  I also have to decide which organizations I want to join, and quick – each carries a $25 membership dues, so I can’t go signing up willy nilly.  I’m most interested in the Environmental Law Society, Public Interest Law Forum, and the Black Law Students Assocation.  Yes, I’m white as a ghost, but see I want to show my son (who happens to be a white male) that diversity is something we don’t just pay lip service to.  When I found out it cost $25, though, I wanted to slink away from the initial meeting.  I’m not racist, I’m just cheap.  However, now that I’ve been to one, and everyone will remember me because I was one of the two non-African-American people there (and the other one is disabled, which means no one is going to mistake her for me or vice versa), I feel compelled to cough up the bucks.  It’s a weird situation.

 

Quick crash course on the Socratic method – which is how they teach in law school.  We read briefs of cases for each class, and then when we arrive some poor slob gets called on and becomes sort of the Captain of the day’s case.  The teacher asks the student questions about the case, just that one student for the full hour of class, and h/she either answers correctly or incorrectly, and it can either be an informative hour for the rest of the class, or an incredibly awkward and stare-at-your-shoes kind of hour.  Most teachers that I have at my school are not known for drawing it out once it becomes painfully obvious that the day’s Captain didn’t prepare, but at some more competitive schools it can be brutal.  So anyway, on Monday I arrive to Contracts and breathe a sigh of relief that my name wasn’t called.  Ditto Criminal Law for later that day.  The same for Civil Procedure this morning.  And then, at Torts, our very interesting and charismatic and popular teacher closes his eyes, waggles his "fickle finger of fate" as he likes to call it, and makes a big show of selecting a name at random from the class roster.  And guess who he calls?? 

 

I laughed out loud, and raised my hand, and he asked me if I was ready.  I tried very hard to answer Absolutely! with gusto, though I think it ended up as more of a high pitched chrip.  In any case, I did just fine.  There were a few stumbles – and can I say how annoying it is when I am thinking for three seconds about the answer to a question and 20 hands go up? relax, kiddos, your day will come, ok? – but for the most part I got to his points pretty quickly, and the hour went by without any memorable screwups.  There was one thing I didn’t know, and I told him I didn’t know, and he opened it to the rest of the class.  Turns out all the brainiacs with their hands up didn’t know either – a few wrong guesses were tossed out before he finally had to tell us.  Anyhow, I’m sort of glad I was first because now I can relax – although we didn’t finish with the case on this day, so I’ll still be on the hot seat come Thursday afternoon.  At the end of class, a girl came up and said I’d done wonderfully, and she could tell I was smart, and could she have my email address so we could form a study group?  I beamed. 

 

So far, and this is HUBRIS screaming loud and clear from over my shoulder – so far, this isn’t that crazy hard.  I know as we get deeper into the semester the readings will get a bit longer, more detailed, and require closer reading, but I was expecting way worse as far as a work load.  I was reading and doing more with my self-assigned pre-reading stuff before law school started.  I have to say I am so glad I read Planet Law School II and did the readings he suggested – or anyway, as much as I could get through with a full time job, baby, house and two cars on the market, move, etc.  Any 1L wannabes who stumble on this ever in the future and wonder how to prepare for your first year of law school?  Do that!  Remember hyperbole sells books, so when the author talks about how horrific law school professors are, and how you learn nothing, and all that jazz – remember it probably won’t be that bad.  But also know that there will be a lot of legal terms bandied about, lots of assumptions about what you already know about the law, and you’ll have an easier time of it if you’ve had some exposure to at least a few of these things ahead of time.  Says the genius after day two of class.  Perhaps you should check back after I’ve taken an exam.