The Case of the Surfing Student
Today in Property class, I saw something so disturbing I had to blog about it.
Right in the middle of lecture, as the class was knee-deep in the various nuances between affirmative and restrictive covenants as compared to affirmative and negative easements, which the Restatements 3rd on Sevitudes would just as soon abolish, blah, blah, blah...I looked over at my neighbor and gasped (in my head...not out loud).
To my horror, she was surfing the Economist website and checking her email on her shiny white Apple Notebook.
What does this mean?
Here I was, straining with every last brain cell to understand these esoteric doctrines, and there she was, seemingly disregarding the whole lecture.
My mind drifted from concentrating on the prof while I contemplated the possible ways to interpret this phenomenon:
1. She's a genius, the equivalent of a legal Doogie Howser, and thus does not need to pay attention.
2. She's incredibly lucky. In her former life, before coming to law school, she just happened to have learned these concepts already.
3. She's got a man on the inside; an upper classman, a tutor, a law school gang, etc. who feeds her secret information about how to ace this class.
4. Or she's just a slacker. She figures this stuff is all in the casebook and she'll have to read it again in preparation for the exams anyway, so why pay attention now? But if that's so, why even go to class at all? In case the prof says something that isn't just in the casebook.
But what does it matter to me?
Ideally, in a perfect world, it shouldn't. I should just mind my own business, try to learn the most that I can, and just do my best, yaddy, yaddy, yaddy...
But law school breeds a sense of competition, primarily because all your classes are graded on a curve. Another person's advantage is your harm. Their pluses are your minuses. And this neighbor of mine had some kind of secret power that made her immune to lecture materials. What was it?
For the rest of class, I contemplated asking her point blank why she could just blow off lectures like that. And then I realized, in my obsession, I had just blown off lecture. Oops.
Right in the middle of lecture, as the class was knee-deep in the various nuances between affirmative and restrictive covenants as compared to affirmative and negative easements, which the Restatements 3rd on Sevitudes would just as soon abolish, blah, blah, blah...I looked over at my neighbor and gasped (in my head...not out loud).
To my horror, she was surfing the Economist website and checking her email on her shiny white Apple Notebook.
What does this mean?
Here I was, straining with every last brain cell to understand these esoteric doctrines, and there she was, seemingly disregarding the whole lecture.
My mind drifted from concentrating on the prof while I contemplated the possible ways to interpret this phenomenon:
1. She's a genius, the equivalent of a legal Doogie Howser, and thus does not need to pay attention.
2. She's incredibly lucky. In her former life, before coming to law school, she just happened to have learned these concepts already.
3. She's got a man on the inside; an upper classman, a tutor, a law school gang, etc. who feeds her secret information about how to ace this class.
4. Or she's just a slacker. She figures this stuff is all in the casebook and she'll have to read it again in preparation for the exams anyway, so why pay attention now? But if that's so, why even go to class at all? In case the prof says something that isn't just in the casebook.
But what does it matter to me?
Ideally, in a perfect world, it shouldn't. I should just mind my own business, try to learn the most that I can, and just do my best, yaddy, yaddy, yaddy...
But law school breeds a sense of competition, primarily because all your classes are graded on a curve. Another person's advantage is your harm. Their pluses are your minuses. And this neighbor of mine had some kind of secret power that made her immune to lecture materials. What was it?
For the rest of class, I contemplated asking her point blank why she could just blow off lectures like that. And then I realized, in my obsession, I had just blown off lecture. Oops.
posted by Alice in Wonderland at 12:26 PM
1 Comments:
she was probably in one of the advantageous situations you listed above. and has resorted to nonchalant websurfing to bring down neighbors such as you, without such advantage, so you will miss the entire lecture.
whatever happened to black lightning notes?
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