Inexplicably, after many years of higher education and a semi-successful career, law school sounded like a great idea. Please enjoy this column, dedicated to documenting the results of that “great” idea.
The break is over, and what started out last semester as an enjoyable diversion from real life now has the feel of routine. Does that make it better?
Oh, hell no. In fact, it makes me wonder, what exactly was I thinking when I signed up for another four years of homework, exam anxiety, and classmates so opinionated you literally have to walk away to make them stop telling you what you should do.
And this semester has a twist I was not expecting…an end to the mollycoddling. Oh, all the students whining last semester about how they had found way better cases than those in our closed library. They were wrong! Oh, so wrong.
The entire universe of cases are at our fingertips. It’s like a tsunami of cases that are crashing into my brain. That case from 1914 seems perfect, but surely someone has re-adjudicated this issue in the past 103 years! Why can’t I find that case?
Not to mention – how do you know if you’re right? You’re reading the case, it seems to indicate a slight difference between how courts deal with two specific terms, but then, it’s not! It’s taking the two terms as synonyms! You are wrong. Objectively, provably wrong in your interpretation of the law! Damn-it! History is subjective. People can disagree with your interpretation, but there isn’t a history judge floating around to tell you just how wrong you are. This is not that.
How did I get through an entire semester and not realize the implications of the fact that the law is not subjective and you can be straight up, absolutely wrong?
Oh, and speaking of mollycoddling, what the hell happened to our in-class exams, with open notes and open books?
They’ve ripped this comfort from us, leaving us dangling atop a vortex of terrifying closed book exams, and desperately trying to figure out how you’re going to remember the 13 cases you’ve already looked at in the first week of class!
The math indicates if we keep this up, we’re going to have 130 freakin’ cases by the end of the semester. I know, pick out the ones that are important. Shut up. If I knew which ones were important, I wouldn’t be in law school, I’d be an idiot savant.
Not to mention my dear friend, idiot savant, who showed up late, fucked around in class, and then pulled out an A in torts. How? It’s like the information was absorbed through osmosis. I don’t know if I’m absurdly impressed, or insanely jealous! Can I be both?
Pretty sure I’m both.