1st day of class (college version)

[ashling]

I am a Grad Assistant for a Con Law class at the University I attend. Today was the first class and we get students to put contact info. on index cards. One of the cards comes back with this written at the bottom.

"I don't do well with lectures"

The person introduces herself to the prof. and tells her that she does not do well with lectures." This prof. is very nice and accomadating to people who have trouble ... also, there are disability services requirements. . . .So she asks the student if she has an attention disorder or something that she needs help with.

"Oh no," the student says "I just get bored. So if you see my eyes glazing over, that's what it is."

I thought the correct response should have been "So, if you get a 0% for participation, that's what it is."

[Moondog]

1. Is this

an undergrad course for a Government / Poly Sci track, or a Con Law course for Law School?

[ashling]

2. Undergrad.

wait till the end of the semester when I post idiotic excuses, etc. I love it when they don't come to class 2/3 of the time, skip one or two assignments, and then come in a few days before the final and ask "How can I make an A in this class. I've really got to get an a in this class."

[Yavin4]

7. Here's What You Say To Them: "Cash for Grades"

This is America, right?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. My dear ashling!

Ah, the first day of class...

Well, you have to give her props for honesty!

Maybe...

Hope things are progressing well for you...

:hug:

[Mr. Blonde]

4. My Civ. Pro. II professor is trying out a new seating arrangement this year

Pen and paper note takers get the first two rows, computer note takers next two rows and multi-taskers on the last two rows.

I'm reading this thinking, do I really have the balls to essentially say, "I'm going to do other shit while you blather on at the front of the room"?

Unfortunately, I have back to back classes in that room, Civ Pro being the second one. I got there late to the first one and was stuck at the back and to hell with moving about in the room. Although she covers so much stuff in class I don't even have time to multi-task if I wanted to.

[Moondog]

5. I went to law school back when women in law were still a novelty.

My one female law professor was for civil procedure. Both semesters. She was a good prof, but she was an utterly humorless person. And she was merciless to the female students, which I thought was odd. Her "pets", and she definitely had them, were all males. In the scenario you describe, I would have moved forward a couple of rows between classes.

[Mr. Blonde]

8. She seems really nice

Most older students rave about her. And of course promised not to judge if you sat in the back row. Sometimes you can't help it if the other rows are already full.

Of course some of the niceness might be that she has the nice old lady voice. She has used it on someone to say, "let me ask this a different way so you get the right answer."

[Tangerine LaBamba]

10. I went to law school before there were such things

as female professors, and we - all the females - were routinely referred to as "lawyerettes" when we were called on to recite.

This was in the twentieth century. In Chicago........................

[Moondog]

11. What year did you graduate?

[Tangerine LaBamba]

12. 1975

When our class started in August, 1972, there were fifty females in a class of one hundred and fifty.

The year before, there had been three women in a class of one hundred and fifty.

I support Affirmative Action....................

[Moondog]

13. 1974.

Five women graduated. Out of, I think, about ten. The female professor was a Univ of Chicago JD from the 50s, NYU LLM, tax, a few years later.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

14. That's where I went to school -

U of C.

Of the fifty women who started that semester, only fourteen remained after mid-terms. It was brutal. I've told my Marine buddy stories that made HIM blanch. But, it was a brilliant education and great preparation for practice.

She had to have been one tough woman to have made it in and out of that place, which, even when I was there, was intensely competitive. But, it's a great school.

[Moondog]

15. She was complicated.

Very crusty exterior. And a lot of inner steel. In between the two was a real person. I always suspected she was tough on the women because she had some idea what they would be facing. But I never saw her laugh. Ever.

[Moondog]

16. Oh, and I was not one of her favorites.

I was the youngest, by far, in my class. 23 when I graduated and sat for the Bar. This, for some reason, disturbed her. So she definitely made me work for it. She provided more than my fair share of opportunities in her class to screw up. But she turned me into a litigator. Used her as a reference for my LLM 15 years later.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

17. There were professors who just hated us -

you could see the distaste in their faces when they were forced to call on us. And I, married, had a hyphenated last name, so you know what THAT meant to them.

It just made me work harder and put it right up against their faces whenever I could. Once, a Contracts teacher, gave me a B on an exam, and I went to his office to argue about it with him. Two hours later, I emerged with an A, and a fine feeling about becoming a litigator.

It was, I should point out, a practice exam.

That's how competitive the place was.

And the professor and I became friends after I passed the bar before graduating (I found a loophole in the requirements that allowed me to pile up credits in record time, and I took the Virginia bar exam three months before graduating, got word that I'd passed exactly one week before graduation). He was the first one to rush to congratulate me when I got my diploma, and it was very touching. I have a photograph of me holding it high up in the air while he, a very tall man, smiles down at me.

The rough ones made us good, which was, I think, their aim ..................

[Tangerine LaBamba]

9. I hate to tell you this,

because we endured TWO back-to-back ninety-minute Civil Procedure classes ON FRIDAY AFTERNOONS, but it's just about the most important course you're going to take in law school.

Everything is procedure. The substantive stuff flows around the procedural ones. So study it as hard as you can, even though it's deathly boring. Dick around with other classes, if you must, but Civil Procedure will own you when you're out there, practicing..............

[RoyGBiv]

6. I'd post my 1st day stories ...

... but they all involve fantasies wherein a grab some punk who thinks s/he has a clue by the throat, carry this individual out to the nearest water treatment plant, and lecture on the meaning of following instructions.

It's not a pretty fantasy, but it makes me giggle when I'm staring down someone who thinks that the best tactic to take with me is to pretend that the right amount of profanity will force me to cower in a corner and reorder the laws of mathematics so that 1+1 actually equals -7.

[ashling]

18. One of the professors here is legendary

for returning a failing first test with a drop sslip already filled out.

I heard of a math professor that includes a McDonalds application w/ a bad test