Saturday, August 25, 2007

Answering Questions

So this week I spoke in class a few times. The first time I volunteered. I had an answer to the professor's question that I thought was a good one. The person sitting next to me thought so too. The next day I got called on. I knew the answer that the person at the end of my row was struggling with, so I thought I did well. Then the professor asked a follow up and I completely flubbed it. I said "I don't think so" when a better answer would have been "Yes." The professor moved on quickly because someone else volunteered with the right answer (I know there are often no right answers in law school, but in this case there was). Anyway, then I felt kind of stupid and when the professor kept going back to the other people that he had asked questions of on that case and didn't come back to me I felt like I needed to prove that I did know what was going on and did have intelligent things to say, so I volunteered and spoke a couple more times that day.

I've noticed that Prof Legal methods seems to have a few favorites in class -- people that he can always count on to have an opinion -- and he calls on them frequently, even when they don't volunteer. But he also is trying to call on everyone in class twice. He finished up the last few people in the first iteration on Friday, so I guess Monday we will all be up for grabs again. He doesn't seem to have a discernible system -- I think it is just random. Anyway, I don't mind it. Even though I froze up that one time, I generally feel like I could give an intelligent answer to most of the questions he asks.

Anyway, I also wanted to answer PT-LawMom's question about the age breakdown of my class. I don't know exactly what the breakdown is for my class but I got the statistics for last year's class off of the admission's website. In that class 78% were 24 or younger, 18% were 25-28 and 4% were 29 or older. This seems to be about what my class is. Well over half are within a year or two of college. There seems to be a significant minority of people around 5 years out of college. Then a few older. I know at least two other people who graduated from undergrad the same year as me who are in my legal methods section. I have also met two other mothers in my class. One has a toddler who is unfortunately living with his grandmother far away for now because she couldn't find daycare, and the other has two kids in college.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow, that's so sad about your classmate with the toddler living apart from her. Hopefully she's close enough that she can see him on weekends? I could never do that but I can see how she would think that law school might lead to a better future for them both. Still...