I'm forgettable (Part II)

While reading another blog, in which the post was describing the habits of a lazy law school student, I was reminded of another instance of my supreme forgettability.

In law school these days, most classes are not like your father's law school class, with the Professor cold calling students, who are then lead down a confusing, boring, often humiliating line of questioning in order to determine if you know the material, can think like a lawyer, and can read the professor's mind. No, these days, the Socratic Method is but a wisp of the torture device it once was. In my school, the standard procedure was to assign a group of students to be "on call" for each class period, thus virtually guarnanteeing that at least that group of students had read the material and were prepared to answer questions about it in front of the class. Of course, sometimes even students who were on call didn't read and this would reflect poorly on them and maybe even get taken out of their dreaded class participation portion of their grade.

By the way, let me just take this opportunity to voice my opinion on what a load of shit class participation is. Sure, we want all the students to participate in class, but people learn differently. I, for instance, learn a lot more from listening to students questions, trying to answer them in my head, and then see if the professor agrees with me. Some students learn better by reading. Some learn by asking 30 questions a day in class. What I am trying to convey is that class participation rewards those students who would speak in class even if they did not have to, and punishes those of us who don't want to speak in class for whatever reason. Furthermore, it creates incentive to be a "gunner." You know the type, those who raise their hand at every opportunity, talk because they love to hear their own voice, and go up to the professor after class to get face time. These people are wasting everyone's time because as soon as they start talking, people just zone out. That situation doesn't help anyone. Plus, the idiot who is wasting everyone's time ostensibly gets rewarded for this behavior.

Back to my forgettability story. I believe the class was Evidence or Criminal Procedure or something of that nature. I also think that it was the second semester of my second year. Even though I am definitely the type of student that sits in the back row of every class, in law school, I made the effort to sit near the front because 1) my eyesight has progressively gotten worse with each year of trying to read the tiny print in the textbooks, and 2) I didn't want to give professors any other reason to hate me for no reason. So I have a seat in about the 3rd row on the professor's right side. I also make it a point to not miss class if I can help it because I get much more out of class than reading a bunch of cases without applying them in hypothetical situations.

A month or so into the term, my little area of the room is on call. As the professor begins calling on people around me and knocking them off like those lead milk bottles at a state fair, the time is inevitably drawing close to my turn. Usually, there is one case in each assignment that just sucks and that case is always the one I wind up with. Always. So we get to that case and the professor is looking around and I feel her eyes bearing down on me.

Expecting to hear my name and some stupid question or joke about the case, the professor looks me dead in the eye with a confused look on her face and says, "Are you in this class?" Not only was I in the class. I had not missed it once. I felt like she was trying to make some sort of joke at my expense, implying that I always skipped it (again, you can see that professors tend to hate me for no reason). Granted, the class had about 100 people in it, but I was in the front section, third row. She should at least recognize my face. This made me seethe with anger. So I figured that if she doesn't know I'm in the class, then I don't have to be on call. I cleared my throat and proudly said, "I'm a visiting student." Most of the class broke out laughing at this because a lot of them knew me and those that didn't at least recognized that I did, in fact, go to the school and was enrolled in that class.

After the laughter died down a little, I figured I'd had my fun and thought she realized her mistake so I said, "No, I'll do it [meaning the case]." Well, she apparently either didn't realize her mistake or was so proud that she could not admit that she was wrong, that she just called on another person as if I really was a visiting student. After class, some of my law school friends in that class could not believe that I 1) actually tried that, and 2) pulled it off without a hitch. I was pretty amused and impressed with myself as well. A lot of these law school professors need to be taken down a few pegs, trust me.

A couple of weeks later, with me still sitting in the same seat and showing up for class every day, the professor finally realized that I was part of the class. In the middle of class, she basically stopped everything to try and embarrass me. She said something along the lines of, "[Catheter Man], didn't I ask if you were in this class?" I said, "Yes. I was joking." She responded, "[Catheter Man] You are in this class?" Yes. "[Catheter Man], I am pronouncing that correctly, right?" Pronounce it however you want. I don't really care. "No. No. No. I want to get it right. [Catheter Man]." Basically, she just wanted to call me out in front of the whole class and let them know that she wasn't going to get played like that. Luckily for me, I had been doing the reading and headed off her little sabotage at the pass.

This is just another example of how forgettable I am. I think I was completely justified in what I did.