The First Day of Class

I’ve attended all of the first classes in all of my courses by now. I was surprised by how much outside knowledge of law the professors expected us to have known on the first day. What really surprised me was that many of the students knew what they did. It took me over 40 years to acquire all of the info, and those little rascals did it in just over 20.

I was also surprised that one professor gave advice on what hornbooks we should consider buying. Some law professors (I’ve heard) consider it a great insult for a student to supplement his/her course with a hornbook. I guess such professors consider it an affront to their teaching prowess and believe that everything a student needs to know can be gleaned from the lectures and casebook. It’s sort of like when guy gets upset when his significant other wants to use a ‘device’ in bed because this would be an insult to the guy’s ‘manliness’ (“I got all you need right here baby.”)
The property professor was quite chatty and likes to cold call on students as well as relies on volunteers. The other professors simply rely on volunteers as far as class participation goes. One thing they all had in common was how much they could talk, and talk they did. There were no overheads, Power Point slides or chalk-talks. Everything was vocalized; it was all words and no visual aids.