The first day of classes

Today was the first day of classes for my second semester of being a 2L. As usual, I have a sneaking suspicion that somehow I got the shaft. In my schedule, I have a day where I have one class, a day with four classes, a day with three classes, a day with two classes, and finally a day with three classes (In that order, M-F). Naturally, school starts on the day in which I have the largest number of classes.

I started off with Evidence. I can already tell that I am not going to enjoy taking this class. I know that it is required so I must take the class anyway, but the fact that the course is at 8:00 in the morning is a big drawback. I am decidedly not a morning person. I can stay up until 4:00 in the morning without a problem, but asking me to wake up before 10:00 is usually not a fast way to get in my good graces. And the course is being taught by "Jimmy C," which is a bad thing for me. I like him as a man, and I an easily tell that he is one of the most intelligent men I will ever have the privilege to know in my lifetime, but all that said, I can’t stand the way he teaches class.

For those not in law school, there are usually three varieties of professors that call on students in law school. For people like me who are, by nature, a bit on the shy side, the prospect of being called to answer in front of the class can be a terrifying thought. Some professors are relaxed and call on students to participate but simply allow students to raise their hands to join in a discussion. To me, these are the best. Strangely, if not forced to come up with an answer, I will typically find one and have decent arguments to back up my answer (however unconventional the answer may be). Other professors do the "lightning strike" method, where the professor will call on you, but with no clearly defined order, and once you’ve been called on you have a week or more of easy breathing because you won’t come back up in the queue for a while. "Jimmy C." follows the last option, though. "Jimmy C." is of the "rolling boulder" type. He’ll simply start at the end of a row and call on people one after another until he reaches the other side of the room. For me, this is pure hell. I don’t learn well under that kind of stress. In fact, I tend to spend about fifteen minutes of the class simply stressing over how many more people he has to go through before he gets to me, what he is likely to ask me about, and attempting to frame a coherent answer beforehand despite my terror. Unfortunately, when I know my ‘turn’ is coming, I spend so much time playing through scenarios in my head that I fail to listen to what is going on in class around me, even though other students are surely making valuable contributions to the class discussions.

Following Evidence, I went to a class on the Federal Court system. I can tell already that I am going to love this class. The subject matter is interesting to me, which is always a bonus. According to the professor, this will be a class about ideas and substance rather than dull, dry procedure, which suits me just fine. I’m at home in the world of ideas and can argue for hours over the proper role of judges in law, what it means to be part of the judiciary, and the proper relationship between the judiciary and the other branches of government. On an even bigger plus, the professor (a new professor hoping to be hired on permanently) is an amazing guy. I’ve found three professors in law school so far whose personal presence commands the room, one simply by the force of his charisma and will, and two of them simply because they seem less regimented and are willing to crack jokes in class. This new professor is one of the latter. Any professor who can make jokes about his own name, have hypos where it involves a cop "kicking your ass because he doesn’t like candy canes" (his words), or people living in the sewer is alright in my book.

After lunch, I had Environmental Law. I wouldn’t even have taken the class, actually, if I had been attending law school alone. I am avidly interested in environmental issues, particularly ones relating to animal rights, but the legal side of that sentiment is generally too dull and dusty for my taste. Slogging through the Clean Air Act is not my idea of a good time, and we seem unlikely to discuss my pet issues. On my own, I would have rather been in the course on Law and Religion, which explores various religious approaches to law and how the law deals with religious groups.

However, I am not in law school alone. I have a small cadre of friends at law school, and I enjoy the company of every single one of them, from the guy who understands philosophy like I do and who can discuss issues of substance with me, to the guy who shares my love of gaming and science, to the woman who shares my love of politics (and agrees with me on a lot of substantive policy issues), to the woman who shares my love of politics (and disagrees vehemently), and to the woman to whom I am indebted for numerous reasons and to whom I owe my continued time at the law school (without whose effort to befriend me I would not have stayed in law school past the first semester). Alongside all of these, one woman, though, seems to me to share a bit more of my personality and mind-set, and she asked me to take the class with her.

I can do things I consider to be fun on my own for the rest of my life. I am more than willing to do things I consider to be less fun if I get to do them with people whom I value. I’ve spent more of my life doing things alone than I care to. Even when I lived with my parents, I spent my time largely alone. During my first semester at law school, once I just stopped talking to see how long it would be before anyone initiated any kind of social contact with me, even if it just meant saying ‘hello’ as they passed me in the hallway. I made it for four days without talking to another person before a professor called on me in class. Having lived this way for the better part of my life, I can tell you firsthand that if you pass up the opportunity to share experiences with people you value, you are passing up life.

Finally, I went to my tax class. This will be one of the most grueling courses I have ever taken, I’m sure, and that means something from someone who took an entire semester of Oil and Gas Law. Apparently, the professor believes that none of us can read a statute (despite the fact that we are all 2L’s and 3L’s. We spent the hour and a quarter agonizing over the tiniest phrases of the code provisions which we looked at, despite their readily apparent meaning. When a provision says something like "As used in this subtitle, Gross Income means..." is pretty clear. This section will define Gross Income, and anywhere we see the phrase "Gross Income" used in this subtitle, we should refer back to this section to find out what it means if we don’t recall. What I just said in one sentence we spent about 15 minutes going over in class. I really hope that we start to go a bit more quickly as the semester progresses.

I still have two more classes yet to go to this week for the first time. Immigration Law and a Legislative Workshop. I’ll have to see what they will be like before making a final assessment of the semester, but for now, I’ll issue a temporary opinion on the semester. A few good classes, a few bad classes, and a few classes in between... In other words, just like most every semester that I’ve been in higher education, only this time with friends.