On every other Friday morning I have the option of staying home, Or I can head over to Hastings and spend two hours sitting in on a class I am auditing. This morning when the alarm went off, I thought about it. Seriously thought about it. Then decided that my time would be much better spent sleeping.
Knowledge is always good, but sleep is really precious.
Apron apparently appreciated, the other worker this morning replied that she would love to have one. So that will be on my list of things to do this evening.
Otherwise, I was in the firing line this morning in Admin Law. It should have been last Thursday and as I mentioned, I might have been overlooked completely. But no, I should have the “learning opportunity.” At least I was challenged with what was the easier side of a discussion of rule making under the APA, section (can’t find the symbol) 553.
For anyone who hasn’t yet fallen asleep, The Administrative Procedures Act was passed in 1946. It covers what administrative agencies (US Government Executive Branch organizations that are set up to “administer” a particular set of rules, law, or organizational requirement). If it is an alphabet soup agency – with rare exceptions, it falls under the APA. These agencies have two main ways of accomplishing their mission: they can make rules, they can adjudicate. We have been on the rule making for a couple of weeks in excruciating detail and may be there for a while. And, by alphabet soup – I mean those agencies which are usually known by their initials rather than names (FDA, EPA, IRS, CMS – you get the idea). The administrative arms which were created to handle implementation of a specific area of law. The easiest and clearest for every US citizen is the IRS – Internal Revenue Service. They take the tax code passed by the US Congress and turn it into “clear” rules and create forms. Those forms are processed, monies handled. Audits are effectively adjudications – the application of the tax law to the individual/firm/corporation to determine whether or not “they” have complied and paid in what was owed.
All of this is a long, round about way of saying that I was hit with describing why, with an implementing section that effectively said to (1) provide notice, (2) accept comments, and (3) publish rules, there were now a whole set of procedures that have been added over the years (mostly the 1970s) by the Courts.
The requirement of giving Notice can be tied directly to the wording in the law. By extension, one can make a case for what giving notice entails (subject, information, data, length of comment period). The same case can be made for what needs to be in the substance of the final rule. For example – is it reasonable to want something said about the comments being considered?
Ok, you are now bored out of your mind. So am I. Maybe. Since I spent decades working in a rule driven environment, all of this makes sense to me. Admin Law is common sense in a way that Constitutional Law never was. I have been the proponent for regulations. There are forms, procedures, and feedback to those who bothered to provide input. I can say that it is all driven by regulation. Or, in my case, since I wasn’t receiving thousands of opinions and useless bits of information, I just thought it was common courtesy to let someone who had made the time and effort to submit improvements/corrections know that their comment was appreciated even if not incorporated into the final document.
What all of that means is that I could rationalize the Court (even the Supreme Court) clarifying procedures. Heather already had her turn so the chore of answering the flip side (why shouldn’t the court be adding extensive procedural requirements to what Congress intended to be informal rule making?) passed up to the second row. This is the fourth week of class. Sitting in the back might have been smart since only ten have been through the wringer so far. I don’t know that everyone will “have the opportunity” to play.
If I could see from the back, I might have considered sitting out of harms way….
You have heard about the “socratic method” of teaching? No?
Explanation: (lifted from criticalthinking.org)
In Socratic teaching we focus on giving students questions, not answers. We model an inquiring, probing mind by continually probing into the subject with questions. Fortunately, the abilities we gain by focusing on the elements of reasoning in a disciplined and self-assessing way, and the logical relationships that result from such disciplined thought, prepare us for Socratic questioning.
So that means that question follows question follows question until everything that could possibly be wrung out of the teaching point.
A Socratic questioner should:
a) keep the discussion focused
b) keep the discussion intellectually responsible
c) stimulate the discussion with probing questions
d) periodically summarize what has and what has not been dealt with and/or resolved
e) draw as many students as possible into the discussion.
The professor announced at the beginning of the year rather than random calling, he would just go down the rows and call on students one after another. Today it was my turn. So I sat through the beginning portion of the class. Not really worried, but I would rather not open my mouth unless I really feel that I have something to offer.
The hour progressed. We started on the cases. Not deliberately, but for whatever reason he thought I had already taken my turn and moved on to Heather. She looked at me, I looked at her. She was prepared just in case and handled the questioning. When I thanked her for stepping up right after the end of the class, the professor over heard me. He thought I had had a turn. Not to worry, I can be first up on Monday.
As if Monday’s aren’t enough fun on their own……
in spite of all my good intentions, I am heading to bed without completing an assignment due at 1420 tomorrow. On the surface, it seems to be an incredibly simple thing: take a list and turn it into an outline/table of contents. What turns out to be tricky is deciding what goes where, and why.
No problem – I can just take my favorite Army regulation and use that as a pattern – right? Except that civilian lawyers, especially those who have worked for various international organizations and NGOs just don’t think the same way as those of us who are steeped in the tradition of admin regulations.
And, as it turns out, the military is one of those exceptions to the APA (Administrative Procedures Act, 1946) so some of the standards which all of those who are US law school trained just don’t apply. One of the other students in this 8 person seminar has spent time related to military regulation drafting, he understands my point of view. But, being a law student, his attitudes are probably a bit more flexible than mine.
The upshot is that I knit four more rows on my Wild Swan – starting from here –
End of Chart F
Unlike a number of those in the KAL, I am not going to run out of beads. I have lots and lots of beads. Some of them are the wrong size or color, but I have the 250 that I will need to finish the shawl.
Yarn? That is another question. I think I have enough for maybe two more rows + the bind-off. The problem is that there are eight rows plus the bind off. I thought this might happen, so contacted Fierce Fibers two weeks ago and have a bit more on order in the darkest color. But it isn’t here yet…..
And then there was the embroidery tonight. Got through the pattern in spite repeated thread breakage (but no needle challenges) and bobbin snarls only to find that the last two colors shifted themselves right from where they belonged by about a cm. It is obvious. Really, really obvious since those two colors complete a frame around the main pattern. I am just glad it happened on a napkin. Not that expensive, I can try it again. But first – I need to figure out if it is the embroidery, the machine or me. Not inclined to repeat the same mistake.
And, oh, gee – it is too late to finish that outline. Or wire diagram. Or whatever the H it is.
Morning?
Today started at 0615 (not counting the snooze alarm on my phone) and it will end with the conclusion of my last class at 1840.
So why am I talking about sunshine? Because there is sunshine and decent weather today. I am taking a break literally outside in front of 198 McAllister sitting at one of the cement picnic tables. Admittedly, it is not the most comfortable place to sit, but the sun on my back feels wonderful.
My first class was 0830-0930. From there I found a comfortable chair in one of the reading rooms. Now, figuring out how to get to the upper floor of the Gold reading room was a bit of a challenge. Officially it is on floor 3M which is somewhere between Floor 4 and the ground level. Now, 2M is between the ground floor and Floor 2. So I would have expected that 3M would fall between 2 and 3. Wrong – so much for logic. The elevator came down from 4, picked me up at 3M, then stopped to let off about five people on 3 before continuing its descent. The only positive portion of this experience was that one of the students mentioned that he usually took the stairs between these two floors.
Stairs? Where are the stairs? Would you believe the stairs connecting the upper gallery (3 Mezzanine) with the main portion of the reading room are outside the reading room.
All of which is too completely confusing for me. As I sit here with my back being warmed by the sun, I counted the floors since I am facing the building. Not counting the ground floor, there are four tiers of windows facing McAllister. The ground floor is not G, it is 1. I will leave it to the convoluted thinking of some architect as to why this was a good design for a building that houses some offices, numerous windowless seminar and classrooms in addition to endless rows of lockers in the basement.
It is time to review a bit more before I slog into the afternoon (Public Health Law, US Health Law, Legal Drafting). I am trying to decide between caffeine and chocolate.
Just the title should let you know that once again it was raining. This time in both Berkeley and San Francisco.
Wednesdays are either great or terrible depending on the week and my attitude. Today, I am on the positive side. Only one class which doesn’t start until 0940 giving me both enough time to get to Hastings and an early change to get home. That will change next week when classes kick in at Cal. But I will still have enough time between morning and afternoon to stop at my favorite Burmese Street Food Restaurant in Berkeley for lunch.
Today’s schedule was a bit different. Because of the holiday next Monday, there are classes that will not happen. Since this is essentially a Law School (writ LARGE) there are certain rules and regulations that must be followed. Part of those rules seem to be the number of hours sufficient in a class of a certain number of credits in order to be able to grant that class status. What does all of that mean? Make-up classes. Yep, can’t completely skip, especially if there are two hours of the same class involved which is the case for my International Human Rights Course. So today, after spending a painful hour going through several treaties (UN on various aspects of human rights) we had a break till noon. There was a presentation scheduled with an invited speaker which was going to count as one of the two hours which will be missed next Monday.
[Of note to me, Cat and maybe a couple of others. Having a network of people around the world is wonderful. When a question came up on one of the treaties as to why Australia was not electing to play, Cat knew where to find the answer. Even more fun, the answer made total and complete sense.)
After all was said and done in the morning (skipping delayed flights leading to a delayed guest speaker) I wandered through the Wednesday Market set up at UN Plaza on my way to BART. I found orange beets, multi-color carrots, fresh spinach, onions and a very interesting version of a citrus fruit which I can’t pronounce.
I skipped running errands with the guys and elected to attempt a reorganization in my studio. By the time I was part way through, it looked worse than when I started, so pictures are being held until I can share the end results.
And it was still raining at the end of the day.
My first class on Tuesdays is 0830. Just to let you know that up front.
Backing up in time, I have to leave about 40 minutes for BART (safe siding) + about 15 minutes to get to BART, not counting the BART schedule. Then add in whatever amount of time I need at home to run around like mad finding everything, getting dressed and pouring that first cup of coffee down my throat. All of this means that I am up somewhere between 0600 and 0630.
My next official class is 1640 in the afternoon.
Yes, you read that correctly. Between 0930 and 1640 I have nothing official scheduled. Having said that, I am auditing a class at 1420 and another at 1530. It would be insane not to since the two classes (Public Health Law and US Health Law) are interesting and had lectures that conflicted with other courses on my schedule.
I am trying to treat those intervening hours the same way I did back in 1984-5 when I had some similar holes in my MPH schedule at Johns Hopkins. Every hour spent studying/working on assignments/usefully occupied while at school is one less hour out of my precious time at home. Right?
The end summary is that by the time my last class finished at 1840 I am done. Cooked. Stick a fork in me. All I want to do is go home. I can’t imagine how horrible it is going to be once the baseball season starts and there are Tuesday night games. (2, 16, 23 April). Probably the only way I will survive is by not having to be at UCHastings until 0940 on . Wednesday.
I got home. Skipped dinner in favor of ice cream and went to sleep extremely early.
It was partway through the day when I figured out that one half of the email list was dated correctly and the other half stated it was “19 Jan 2019.” Now obviously that was not true. What was probably worse was that I originally thought that the 13th was the incorrect date.
Something tells me that I was not feeling as well as I would like to have imagined.
It was obviously a slog to get to school. I made in through my two morning classes, the return through BART and was grateful for a pick-up by George. I was going to use the excuse of being completely brain dead as to why I wasn’t really studying for the rest of the day. But really, is knitting a complicated lace something I should be trying in a brain dead situation?
Through Chart E
the left “wing”
I won’t bother to tell you how many corrections I had to make on the return rows to finish the last portion of clue 3. Let us just say that there were a lot of yarn overs and beads involved.
Yep. Gave up. Went to bed with the intention of getting up early….
I am not sure why I thought that the UCHastings Buildings would be open early in the morning. After all, the school is located right off Civic Center, the UN Plaza and the hotbed of drug sales on Golden Gate Ave. Nope, the doors open at 0700 to both the classroom building (198 McAllister and the main office building – 200 same).
Since I have been bopping in and out now since August, I pretty much know all the morning security guards by both face and name. It was one of them this morning that reminded me that the only building open early (and security desk staffed 24/7 is that of the Towers (AKA dorm area)). OK, I can deal with that. George very kindly waited while I ran into PEET’s for coffee on the way to BART so my caffeination process was already well underway with the addition of a muffin in my backpack for later. I also have knitting – both a cowl I started while on the Rhapsody
~ lace weight gradient
as well as the Wild Swan shawl. And beads. And crochet hook. And pattern. And extra stitch markers.
You see, I have this huge gap in my schedule today, a very late class and a prospective dinner related to the J.P Morgan meeting. Can you spell – long day?
Well, classes have started up at Hastings for the “Spring” semester. The only thing remotely spring like is the rain (well, for anywhere else, spring = rain. Here rain = winter). But the weather is just a digression. To put it bluntly, my schedule in this new year sucks. I have two classes on Monday morning at Hastings. On Monday afternoon I need to be at Cal for the Intro to Public Health Infectious Disease course that I am a contributing lecturer. Tues I have one class at 0830 and the next is not until 1420 in the afternoon. Then my last seminar is for two hours starting at 1640. Wednesday is one lecture at 0940 followed by the trip back over to Cal.
Thursday starts with an 0830 lecture, then a seminar at 1420 for a couple of hours. Friday morning is two hours starting at 0940.
To summarize, I have to BART to San Francisco every blinking day. I have huge holes in my schedule. If I am smart, this means time spent in the library and I should have absolutely no need to do much of anything outside of all of those extra hours so kindly furnished me by the scatter shot schedule.
If my original choice of courses had not been cancelled, I would have been done by 1530 on Tues/Thurs and might have avoided that Wednesday morning completely. Argh.
In better nows – I am making progress on Wild Swan
Through Row 78
as this is a gradient yarn, just the first bit of shading from natural to pale blue can now be seen
After reviewing a couple of hours, which was a break from packing – I downloaded and took my last exam. This is a timed open book exam. Not that having an open book is of any help at all. I had extensive notes, but there simply isn’t time to find, cut and paste as apposed to simply answering the question/s.
It seems like all law school exams are essays – which may explain the definite faculty preference for computer over blue book. With an open book/on-line exam, there isn’t much choice, it is going to be computer.
Of course, it also helps if you remember to either convert your document into Word (ick) or PDF it.
Pages is my standard. The above is mentioned because I forgot to convert the exam so had to immediately send a copy in the right format. The upload software doesn’t let you upload again/replace whatever you send.
I would rather scribble in a blue book….
At least that is what I am telling myself. So far I have reviewed five pages of outlines, several misc. documents, read through my notes, played computer games and skimmed some junk genre fiction.
So much for good intentions.
And there was also the Cal’s Women’s Basketball game this afternoon (they pulled off a win, but their % from the floor left a bit to be desired. Had the opponent been one of the PAC-12, it would not have turned out so well). But the Straw Hat Band was there, tho not in numbers. I gifted out the first batch of pins made from Miriam’s design
thought about studying some more, but had dinner instead and going to sleep relatively early.
Law schools make a huge production out of exams. Seriously huge. I don’t remember anything, including National Boards or Specialty Exams that were this much of a production. Of course, those were also in the paper/pencil days and did not include essays.
Law schools LOVE essays.
Option one – Download Exam4 software on your computer and type your essay. This has good and bad points. On the good side, there is ease in grading for the professor as there are no issues with handwriting. For students, there is a built in spellchecker and the ability to cut and paste. The last is significant it terms of reorganizing a several page answer. On the downside – there is the significant issue of installing someone else’s software on my computer and I really think a higher expectation on the part of the faculty member as far as organization and extent of answer. There is also the “baffle them with bs” that many of us tend toward when. we run out of something useful to say. It is oh, so easy to do this with a word processor. You also have to be extremely familiar with the software in order to have it function properly.
Option two – hand write in blue books. The downsides are obvious: you have to be organized, coherent, and have decent handwriting. On the plus side, if you do it properly, you can write less. You also don’t have to deal with a software program that wants to do strange things while you are writing. No worries about losing one’s answers or not having it upload properly
It might not make sense to you, but I will always pick blue book (handwritten) over a computer generated exam. My handwriting is not that bad and I want concentrate on the content of what I am writing and not on the form of the exam (making it look pretty on the paper). The blue book rules are one side and every other line. I can work within those parameters. And yes, I have been dealing with computers since 1968. That doesn’t mean that I have to use them – they are a tool – and so is a pen.
This particular professor set a word limit for the essay. The total exam is 3 hours – there are going to be 20 multiple choice questions and then an essay for the last two hours. Word limit is 3000, and page limit for blue book is 27 (assuming about 110/words/page). This particular version of WordPress provides a word count for each post as well as autosave and update on a regular basis. To this point I am at ~ 440 words. Slighly more than 10% of what would be allowed for a 2 hour essay. Frankly, that is a lot of words in a relatively short time. More than I would want to generate. More that I honestly could generate.
(update, my blue book answer certainly didn’t use 27 pages. At 12 usable pages per blue book, I finished before the end of the second. It would have helped if I had used a simpler outline and remembered to place all the points in the correct order so I wouldn’t have had to back track/fill in. Next time….)
The first of my final exams for the semester is this Wednesday. I haven’t even bothered to look and see if it is morning or afternoon. It doesn’t matter at this point and by then I think all the material is going to leak back out of my brain, run out my ears and puddle on my pillow. If I get any sleep. The specific class is Constitutional Law II – which mostly focuses on the Constitutional Amendments. Since I have never taken Con Law I, Torts, Property, I am at a bit of a disadvantage whenever a discussion starts with “as you remember from…..
I mentioned years ago (War College – 1997-1999 concurrent with command in Würzburg and the frolic and detour to Bosnia with TFME) that there is a lot of reading, only if you do it. I haven’t read as much of the assigned Con Law reading as I probably should have. Frankly, I don’t get it and wading through it left me more confused than if I asked fellow classmates and took good notes during class. Notes taken on paper with pen, thank you very much, not typed where the words hit your ears and are transferred to your fingers without processing. If you play any musical instrument, you know exactly what I mean. You need to see the notes and have your fingers do what they are supposed to do – there is no time for thought.
The actual text book for this course, in hard copy is somewhere around 1400 pages, plus a couple hundred page supplement with the most recent new Supreme Court Cases. I have made the occasional notes in the textbook – electronic version that you can carry without back ache are great – the ability to annotate is even better. The supplement is paperback. For some reason, the organization is better and I can distinguish between the authors commentary and what was ACTUALLY found or held in the case. Not so much in the main text. There is an awful lot of “if you could say it in 100 words, a few thousand would be soooo much better.” I am thinking some of that might be left over from when any judge was a practicing attorney. Lawyers bill, right? By time increments in the US is the current practice. If you write more, it takes longer and you can charge more….
Back to studying. The first class was third week or so in August. Since all the lectures are recorded, I can review the lectures (1.5 speed) while checking my notes and filling in whatever handouts the professor might have furnished. (I will hold off on the “OUTLINE” rant, that would just be overload). Having reviewed a fair amount as we went along – I am on the “month a day plan.” I’ve been through August and just finishing up Sept. Tomorrow I will get through Oct and then that just leaves me Nov.
After all, who wouldn’t want to devote extensive hours to determinations of level of scrutiny, equal protection, due process? Oh, and let us not forget – the incorporation doctrine which definitely has to include the III Amendment. None of us want troops billeted in our houses.
Oh wait! I was one…..
It was fun, an almost full house between having family members in town, some friends from the public health class and a number of my fellow students from UCHastings (the Exchange and LLM programs).
Needless to say, there was more than enough food, a lot of laughter and a number of them taking me up on the hot tub invitation.
Sometimes riding BART can put you to sleep; other times it is hard to breath. Today was a usual ride, meaning that we were all packed in like sardines. Like most of the rest of the travelers – the choice is to stare off into nothing or read. Well, except for those who play games on their phones, but they don’t count.
So there I was, reading. Embarcadero, Montgomery. Two stops where most of the people exit BART and head off to wherever they will be entombed for the day. But not today, for some reason the car in which I was riding stayed packed so I drifted back to my book. The next time I looked up we were at …. 16th and Mission? Whoops – I was a stop too far and barely made it on to the platform before the door snapped shut behind me.
At least getting back was easy, unlike many of the subway locations in NYC or Metro in DC – just walk across the platform and grab the next inbound train. Ride one stop and I was back to Civic Center where I should have exited the other train in the first place. It was good that I had left early since those extra minutes could have resulted arriving late for class, not one of those things that any of us appreciate. I mean, really. Wander in after the class has started? Not a great choice, but the only one when they take attendance.
I will be sincerely glad when all the trains in the system have been replaced with cars that have electric signs at the ends and clear announcements in the cars. After all, it can’t possibly be MY fault that I missed my stop, now can it?
are one of those particularly American Legal thing. At the Appellate Level you have apposing council and and a panel of judges. Unlike your standard courtroom trial, those judges can, and do, ask questions. They also interrupt and try to score of you, your opponent and the other judges.
It is words for knives veiled in politeness at less than 10 paces. Someone dies loses every time. Reminds me of a song heard long ago, sung at Darkover by Clam Chowder when Shana was young. It was all about two lawyers apposing each other. When all was said and done, they shook hands as friends.
It some worlds, it would be impossible to treat your opponent as a friend. The legal mind appears not to experience cognitive dissonance: this representation is a job; everyone is entitled to good representation; I can do this. But why, someone like me asks? Don’t you have a compass? Can you just put aside what you believe in order to earn top prize money? Or worse, don’t you believe in anything? Are you for sale?
Medicine is so different from this. Many of us struggle with the idea of making a living off the bad things that happen to others. I think it is why there has been the tendency to take salaried positions over the last couple of decades; to not have to worry about who is paying what. To be able to battle on the side of one’s patient rather than with them to get costs covered.
Gee, got off track didn’t I?
Anyway, I was stuck today in the Moot Court Room, 4th floor of 198 McAlilster. One of my classmates and I had drawn apposing sides of a made up issue about free speech, loud students and printed t-shirts. Sela has had sick children at home, I have had absolutely no interest in writing out an oral argument. As it turns out, each of us did most of our decision making and prep in the hours right before our noon appearance.
And we both did fine. Sometimes there is over preparation. And sometimes you just get lucky.
I don’t know where my mind was this morning. Or rather, I think I left it steeped in the cup of coffee forgotten on my dresser. Somewhere in the back of my mind was the thought that I needed to be at UCHastings by 0900.
Which in and of itself is strange since I didn’t have a class prior to 1040, or maybe it is 1050? Anyway hard to tell since the constant bopping forward by 10 minutes in the class schedule always leaves me confused. Not exactly my favorite thing as you might guess. Spend enough years where at least the rules are clear and the clock has 24 hours in a day and you lose some of your tolerance for petty stuff.
Walking in the door of the classroom building I saw one of my classmates seated on a chair next to the security desk.
Hi!
Hi! I got in return. It is 0900 and I am registering.
Oh, yes. The reason I am here early. Registration opens on-line at 0900. The 3JDs, LLMs, MSLs have first crack. And If I don’t register today, I have to wait till much, much later. Heading up to the third floor, I pulled my computer out of my backpack. And to think I almost didn’t want to bother with the weight today.
Three minutes later and I was registered for all my sections. There will be an issue later, as one of the classes I want to take overlaps with a class that I am required to take. The overlap is one hour every other week, but apparently these folks are anal about such things. In any case, I am registered and can now go find more coffee.
Somehow, as a child of suburbs and small towns I had failed to connect the idea of children, schools and cities.
I know that it should be obvious to everyone that there are schools (elementary and secondary) inside cities. Hello? Cities, people, children = schools. Then let me describe the area around UCHastings. The Law School sits in the middle of the Tenderloin, an area much more likely known for street people, drug dealing and homelessness than for families with small children. Rather than recite most of the facts, the Wiki article at the link is worth reading. Bottom line? The area around Hastings has a plethora of homeless persons, police, and drug dealing. It is not an area I would wander around in after dark.
The local BART stop is Civic Center. The area is also home to a few theaters, museums, and a number of court houses.
Reading the historical information that a portion of the area was at one time referred to as Little Saigon, I don’t know why I didn’t connect that bit of information along with the city not allowing a lot of gentrification in the area implies both poverty and families.
On my way back from Peet’s on Monday (Corner of Turk and Van Ness) I walked past a building that was obviously a school. Given the mosaics, I could safely assume elementary school. Next corner I hit another major clue. School Crossing Guards complete with Stop Signs working with the traffic lights, walk signals and pedestrians. It was then that the thought of schools in the area finally sunk into my head. Like the average non-inner city dweller, I don’t really think about the upper stories of most of the buildings I am walking past. Certainly, I guess I was oblivious to the fact that, since there are any where from three to numerous stories, someone must be occupying the floors above street level. Like perhaps people live there?
The crossing guards had cell phones in one hand, their red Stop Sign in the other along with a smile for just about everyone. Smiling back, they form an excellent cross-section of the people who live in the area. San Francisco is about as population diverse as any community in the US. It is a city which ranges from the inner bay to the Pacific Breakers with hills. It is a city with tech leaking out the seams, a busy financial district, and tourists. It is also home to more than 400,000. Of course there are schools….
It was liket a light bulb went off over my head. You know the one – blinding flash of the obvious – where, in retrospect you have no idea why you missed the main point of whatever. It was an innocent remark of George’s that triggered my understanding.
Let me give you some background so that you can understand the context.
I using my GI Benefits to collect yet another degree. I thought about some of the PhD programs – but, thinking in German, Dr. Dr. is just stupid. I have an MPH. I decided, in 1999, that I did not want a MS in military science. This left me with looking at the various programs offered in the area. I wanted a program that I would attend. Between 2011-2015 I did enough on-line courses through Coursera and EdEx that, while accumulating a lot of knowledge good for trivia and general enjoyment, I found that I missed the face-to-face interactions with faculty. UCHastings (Law School of which George is an Alumni) offered a Masters in Studies in Law (MSL). The program is designed for those already with advanced degrees in the fields of medicine, technology, business, with a grounding in law. The variety of courses offered is excellent, mostly relevant, and provides a completely different way of looking at one’s field from the legal/regulatory point of view. The two main downsides are cost and day-time only courses which means the program is not really accessible (yes, you can study part time and complete the degree over 4 years) for most working professionals.
Now you have the background. Let us move on to socratic methods of teaching.
No, lets us not. I would rather skip that whole mess. I am a doc, I like lectures; I like reading things that make sense, are exact and are consistent. Short is better and facts which are well known do not need references.
Moving on to law school exams. No, I am not in law school, but my classes are at a law school and my classes are filled with law students. Other than having the shortest and most concise essays of anyone on the first few exams (you could write more….) I ran into little problems understanding what the faculty member wanted out of me for the exam.
Then I hit a practice exam in Constitutional Law II and totally missed the point. I answered the question with real world knowledge. I know what the professor intended, but he used a real world situation, so I answered in kind. Wrong. He wasn’t looking for what was TRUE, he was looking for a logical essay on a couple of constitutional points and some definitions he thought might be of consideration.
The difference between this exam and the others? All of the others had used fake states, towns, cities or situations. I could take them as purely related to the legal principles. In contrast, ask me about deployment of National Guard and my mind goes from theory to reality. Repeat, I am a doc. Talk to me about “any patient” and I will give you an any patient answer. Ask me about a specific patient, and guess what you will get.
George just looked at me. Law school questions are a closed universe. Use only the information contained. It is an isolated universe. Reality “hat nicht zu tun.”