Murphy's Law School
My at-bat day in Sales has come and gone. Somehow when class ended I felt more like puking on my laptop than before the professor first started the grilling process. I was Person #1 in line to speak today. For whatever reason--whether because Person #2 used too many pronouns while speaking or because the professor was getting back at me for what happened before I was on-call earlier this semester--I was subjected to a good 30-minute interrogation about the case.
As usual he threw out constant curveball questions. I did not answer everything correctly but unfortunately neither did the person who was to go after me, which made the professor decide to come back to me for further questioning rather than move on to Person #3. Person #2 probably spoke all of five minutes. I felt bad for Person #3 because he asked her a question to which the three of us had formulated an answer before class (because I figured it was a question the professor was going to ask) but she did not know the answer. He really lit into her and it was pretty horrible. Then he asked me. Instead of saying I didn't know I tried to sound confident in my guess, which luckily was correct. But then he continued to grill me even longer. He eventually moved on to Person #3 to discuss the problem in the book after the case and talked to her for about 10 minutes before ending class early.
It was not the perfect version of how everything could have gone down because I was definitely demeaned a few times for incorrect answers ("A court is not a person, Ms. G_____. I am asking which person said the following...", "Enough about statutory construction! That is not what I am talking about.” etc.) At least it's over. (And I now cringe whenever using pronouns in my writing thanks to this professor and his interruptions (with a disgusted look on his face) of "Who is 'he', Mr. So-and-so" or "What does 'it' mean?")
All day I told my friends that this would be the worst day for our Civil Procedure professor to decide to call on me. Murphy's Law in law school is pretty shitty. Obviously my Civ Pro professor decided to call on me today more than once. He even said at one point "It's G______ Day today!" to which I said very sarcastically "Oh really? How lucky." (He kind of likes people who make sassy remarks, we've noticed.) Luckily I got the three or four questions he asked me right and he moved on from me when I got one wrong because I actually made a joke. Getting 75 people to laugh kind of eases the nerves a bit but he could have come back to me at any minute for the next hour, so there was still a lot of anticipation. Ross thinks maybe the professors conspire and that this professor called on me today specifically because he knew I would be on-call in Sales later in the afternoon.
At least Sales is done. There's still a very large possibility of being called on again in Civ Pro because you just never know with that professor, but I should be safe in the rest of the classes for the next week until we're done.
This weekend I need to rewrite my damn memo. The conference went alright with the professor and I think I understand how to fix most of the problems, but it's going to take a day or more to get this memo into decent shape. Hopefully I will have enough done to e-mail her questions about specific paragraphs or sentences. That would have been my focus this week if I hadn't needed to keep up with/prepare for Sales.
I actually cried myself to sleep Tuesday night because the week was so stressful. Somehow I made the mistake of glancing at an old Constitutional Law exam after I finished my homework and flipped out because (I thought) I didn't know the answers to the questions. That combined with the fact that Con Law is my most complete outline at this point and all of the other crap this week just put me into sobbing mode, but Ross was very comforting. Then yesterday E. and I talked over the questions I read the night before and found an answer key online that I had not noticed the night before. It turned out that my answers were right! I don't feel a ton better about Con Law because it's supposedly the hardest test any of the 2- or 3Ls have taken in school, but it made a world of difference in my mood yesterday.
What a long week.
As usual he threw out constant curveball questions. I did not answer everything correctly but unfortunately neither did the person who was to go after me, which made the professor decide to come back to me for further questioning rather than move on to Person #3. Person #2 probably spoke all of five minutes. I felt bad for Person #3 because he asked her a question to which the three of us had formulated an answer before class (because I figured it was a question the professor was going to ask) but she did not know the answer. He really lit into her and it was pretty horrible. Then he asked me. Instead of saying I didn't know I tried to sound confident in my guess, which luckily was correct. But then he continued to grill me even longer. He eventually moved on to Person #3 to discuss the problem in the book after the case and talked to her for about 10 minutes before ending class early.
It was not the perfect version of how everything could have gone down because I was definitely demeaned a few times for incorrect answers ("A court is not a person, Ms. G_____. I am asking which person said the following...", "Enough about statutory construction! That is not what I am talking about.” etc.) At least it's over. (And I now cringe whenever using pronouns in my writing thanks to this professor and his interruptions (with a disgusted look on his face) of "Who is 'he', Mr. So-and-so" or "What does 'it' mean?")
All day I told my friends that this would be the worst day for our Civil Procedure professor to decide to call on me. Murphy's Law in law school is pretty shitty. Obviously my Civ Pro professor decided to call on me today more than once. He even said at one point "It's G______ Day today!" to which I said very sarcastically "Oh really? How lucky." (He kind of likes people who make sassy remarks, we've noticed.) Luckily I got the three or four questions he asked me right and he moved on from me when I got one wrong because I actually made a joke. Getting 75 people to laugh kind of eases the nerves a bit but he could have come back to me at any minute for the next hour, so there was still a lot of anticipation. Ross thinks maybe the professors conspire and that this professor called on me today specifically because he knew I would be on-call in Sales later in the afternoon.
At least Sales is done. There's still a very large possibility of being called on again in Civ Pro because you just never know with that professor, but I should be safe in the rest of the classes for the next week until we're done.
This weekend I need to rewrite my damn memo. The conference went alright with the professor and I think I understand how to fix most of the problems, but it's going to take a day or more to get this memo into decent shape. Hopefully I will have enough done to e-mail her questions about specific paragraphs or sentences. That would have been my focus this week if I hadn't needed to keep up with/prepare for Sales.
I actually cried myself to sleep Tuesday night because the week was so stressful. Somehow I made the mistake of glancing at an old Constitutional Law exam after I finished my homework and flipped out because (I thought) I didn't know the answers to the questions. That combined with the fact that Con Law is my most complete outline at this point and all of the other crap this week just put me into sobbing mode, but Ross was very comforting. Then yesterday E. and I talked over the questions I read the night before and found an answer key online that I had not noticed the night before. It turned out that my answers were right! I don't feel a ton better about Con Law because it's supposedly the hardest test any of the 2- or 3Ls have taken in school, but it made a world of difference in my mood yesterday.
What a long week.