Archive for January 20th, 2006

The First Class

Friday, January 20th, 2006

I had my first class Wednesday night: Legal Research & Writing I. It was a very interesting experience. Not terribly productive, but interesting. It was also a very small family occasion.

When I left the house, Beau Hunk told Woo that I was going to school. He was very excited for me, since he absolutely adores going to school. They came out to my car to see me away, both of them waving, Woo saying “I love you!”, which are about the sweetest words ever uttered by a little munchkin.

Ten minutes later as I was driving to school, my cell phone rang. Actually, it vibrated, scaring the hell out of me, because it was in my backpack and the car radio was playing, so at first it sounded vaguely like my vehicle was falling apart. I switched off the radio and my panic was instantly replaced by stupidity when I realized the hideous noise was just the phone ringing, not my car shedding pieces and bits down the road. The phone call was from my parents, who called to wish me good luck on my return to scholastic endeavors. I was very touched by the gesture, especially since I knew my husband put them up to it.

I arrived at school with plenty of time to spare, found prime parking and spent a fair amount of time standing around with my fellow classmates outside of a locked classroom. It was an experiment in people watching and listening.

Being college, there was of course a small cluster of emaciated females whose speech revealed the possibility of emaciated brains. I call them the Twit-o-Ramas. Their conversation went something like this: “like, backpacks, in like, the bookstore, are, like, fifty dollars!! I was all, like, gah!” I was torn somewhere between laughing out loud and joining the conversation to ask if the backpacks were fifty dollars, or were they like fifty dollars. Because I might want a backpack that was like fifty dollars. I could use it to buy some Taco Bell or something.

Our class age spans a larger spectrum that I had expected. The youngest is 18 (not surprising), but the oldest is a 72 year-old woman who is starting a new career. Go lady, go!! There are only two men and probably 20 women. There are several people in the class who are starting new careers, and many who have ambitions of going to law school.

The professor seems fair enough, but was quite clear that she knew the ins and outs of flakey college students and would brook no bullshit. She also made it very known that there is no room for Know-It-Alls. We have one person in the class who thought he’d show off his vast knowledge of the legal system by asking if we would cover blah-blahs, throwing out some specific legal jargon. But he didn’t really know what he was asking, he was just showing off. Each time the professor would ask him to clarify his remark, because it made no sense. He would try and mostly fail. Then she’d tell him what it was that he was trying to say, why he was saying it wrong, and how that sort of imprecision related to the class. By the end of the evening, the professor announced that she was going to have lots of fun picking on him, since he was convinced that he knew the materials already (and clearly did not). I’m not sure if I was amused by her command of the situation, or horrified of the prospect of her doing that to me.

Next week I start my Family Law and Intro to Paralegalism classes, bringing my triad of firsts full-circle. I wish it wasn’t so far away, because I’d like to erase the unknowns and move on. But the good news is that I have almost a week to do my first reading assignment without any conflicting assignments. If I were smart, I’d probably use that time to set up a study regimen and space. But I’ve never been accused of being terribly smart, so I’m not holding high hopes about that sort of ambition.