Er, Would You Mind Repeating That?

This morning I had my first Immigration Law class. This was the class I was most looking forward to, as it's the area of law I'm most interested in. Unfortunately, the class didn't go too well. The teacher torrented a frenzied blur of verbiage for two solid hours. I sat on the front row and felt like I was a dome-hatted jungle explorer wielding a machete, my comprehesion derived from hacking away at the words. Even worse, she frequently used, in speech, the textual designation "i.e.," when "e.g." would have been far more appropriate, making for the most annoying/distracting teacher quirk since my history professor at OU who would draw rectangles with his index fingers to emphasize salient points.

My note-taking was much hindered by this, as you can imagine. I got a new laptop over the summer, and I'm still getting used to navigating its keys with my stubby fingers. I stopped taking notes and just sat there listening. A glance around the classroom at the furrowed brows of several other students, also not taking notes, reassured me I was not alone in my dilemma.

So, I've decided to start taping classes, at least hers. Too much valuable info goes by for it not to be collected. However, I may have to be covert. In the middle of last year's fall semester, a scandal of sorts broke out at the law school. A professor lost his temper when a student had a beligerent response to the Socratic method. The professor kicked the student out of his class, and, still very angry, launched into a tirade that featured much swearing. Another student was taping class, and an mp3 made from his or her tape made the underground rounds of the law school. I have to say, it was about as entertaining as Orson Welles's famous frozen peas rant.

The professor wasn't really disciplined by the school. Though the way he expressed himself was, arguably, in poor taste, he didn't contravene any regulations. For a while, there was talk of finding the student taper who circulated the mp3, and filing some kind of charges (according to the rumor mill, the legal theory contemplated fell under federal wiretapping law). The whole thing eventually died down, but a host of syllabi in the Spring semester reflected new class taping policies, many of which severly limited, or outright banned, taping of class lectures.

I don't know whether taping is allowed in my Immigration Law class (it isn't not allowed; how's that for odious lawyer-think?) I'm of the mind, though, that if only a court stenographer could capture the lecture, taping is not unreasonable.

On a different note, I spoke with two 1Ls today. One is a student in the class for which I'm TA'ing (love making those verbs out of nouns), the other a guy I met in the library. The first one comes from lawyer stock, so she is already really on top of her game, having read Examples and Explanations books for every class she's taking. The other is like me. He came into law school cold, and I had to patiently explain what a class outline was. I encouraged him to get started early and tackle it in small doses, advice I wish I'd had. That's the nice thing - feeling you get a chance to redeem your mistakes by helping others prevent them; feels almost parental. It's funny though. I'm telling these "war stories" of things that happened less than a year ago, but in the telling sound like decades-old triumphs and defeats.

Oh, well. I was always good at inflating my self-importance.