Law Students

Second Year Evening Students - An Exercise in Frustration

By BigShow

As evening students, our “first year” course load is spread out over a total of two years. Where a first year day student would have Crim, Con Law, Evidence, Contracts, Property, etc. during his first year, we in the evening division get our classes split up.

So this year, a number of the Hypo crew have Evidence, Con Law and Criminal Law this semester. This was what I wanted to get in law school - I want to be a litigator, and I was considering a criminal law career. So this semester was everything I wanted. And as a history and politics buff, Con Law is just a fun subject.

I hit the ground running, ready for some serious studying and real challenges.

What I got was two of the most excruciatingly dumbed down classes I have ever had, and one that is good.

As I write this, I’m in Evidence. So far, we’ve been going over the Federal Rules of Evidence dealing with relevance and introduction of character evidence. The professor has a powerpoint up, with information on it. Now, in most law schools I’m familiar with, one of the primary prerequisites to entry is literacy. I can read. But, apparently, it’s important to test our ability to do this. So our professor is literally asking us questions that are answered on the powerpoint slide on the screen. And when no one raises their hand, because we are staring at each other thinking ‘is this for real?’ the professor points out that the answer is on the screen.

I am not making this up.

And the worst thing is, this isn’t confined to Evidence. Our Criminal Law professor does the exact same thing. And that class is even worse. Students are commonly called on to read statutes we have been provided in class aloud. Reading aloud. I was under the impression that this was Second Year Evening Law School, not Second Grade.

In these two classes, at least, our professors don’t recognize that we are not first year students. They are teaching these classes as if we have never been in a law school class and have no idea what we’re doing. We do. We’ve spent a year learning basic legal concepts, like statutory interpretation. We don’t need to do it again. Not only is it frustrating, its patronizing.

The worst part is that there are some students who play into the stupidity. They ask off the wall questions or random stream of conciousness ideas that can only reinforce the professors’ idea that we’re all droolcup retards.

Okay. I need to stop writing this article before I break something. This is just f-ing ridiculous. Why am I paying for this again?

Full post as published by Fight The Hypo on September 08, 2008 (boomark / email).