The Three R's

I thought I had learned the 3 R's in elementary school.

Apparently, not well enough. The 3 R's for law school are much the same as the traditional Readin', 'Ritin', and 'Rithmatic. But of course there's not really any math involved, so I would change the last one to Reasonin'.

I never really felt deficient in these 3 categories until now. Especially the Readin' one. Everyday I find myself getting a little bit more behind on the readings than the day before. That's because I'm a slow reader. And it's also because I'm a bad reader.

Honestly, I've never had to really read before. In highschool, you just listen to your teacher lecture. In college, I was a language major, primarily because it didn't require me to read, just translate. But now, there's no escaping it. It's read or die. And I'm dying.

I also didn't realize that I was such a bad writer. One of my profs put up this sentence on the board and asked us what's wrong with it:

The defendant says he told you the truth. But, did he tell you the whole truth?

It looked like a fine sentence to me. But, apparently, you shouldn't have the comma after "but". And there were many other badly written sentences that puzzled me too. Stuff about refering to antecedents and prepositional phrases. Look, my whole philosophy on proper writing is that it's fluid. It's cultural. It changes with popular usage. But,...that philosophy isn't serving me well now.

The only one of the 3 R's that I can half decently perform is the Reasonin'. But I'm still way off from the standard that the profs want. They befuddle me with their incessant questions of "why?" Kind of reminds me of the relentless toddler who suddenly wants to understand the world.

"Why is the sky blue?"
"Because God made it that way."
"Why did He make it that way?"
"Because that's his favorite color."
"Why does he like blue best?"
"Because blue rhymes with shoe."
Or if you don't want to resort to flat out lies,
you say, "Because I said so!"

Now here's the law version:

"Why did the judge decide that the damages were incorrectly ascertained?"
"Because the proper measure was the difference in market value."
"Why is the proper measure the difference in market value?"
"Because the other alternative creates economic waste."
"Why is economic waste undesirable?"
"Because...um...it's just bad?"
"No, tell me why! What's behind it? Come on, dig a little deeper!"

And you just want to say, "Because the case book says so!"

Now, after only a week of law school, I realize how truly flabby my grey matter is. But like anyone who's on a good exercise and diet program, I look forward to the day when I can sport the mental equivalent of six-packs and chiselled pecs. For now, I'm just in constant pain.