Good Intentions

And now, for your reading pleasure, Things That Annoy Me (in no particular order):

1. People who espouse their opinions in class. This might shock you–I know, it shocked me too–but I am not paying a Brazilian dollars for law school to hear what you think about a given case/issue/current event/theory/constitutional principle/life event/whatever. If I cared any less, I’d be dead. And even then I’d find some way to rise from the dead and care even less than that. In all honesty, I don’t even want to hear your opinions outside of class–I’m looking at you, People Who Talk Too Loudly in the Carrells–but I especially don’t want to hear it in class. Really. Just shut the hell up and continue frantically taking notes.

2. Professors who ask for student opinions in class. Seriously? You care what we think? Shut up and be a pedagogue; I’m not paying you to pretend to teach by asking incredibly open-ended questions to which there are no real answers. I am not taking Random Gunner’s test, I am taking YOUR TEST. So I only care what YOU THINK.

3. Gunners. Shut the hell up. Seriously.

4. Houston drivers. You all suck. Every last one of you. I know epileptic ADD puppies who can drive better than you can. Use your damn signals! Stay in your damn lane! Drive the damned speed limit!

5. UH parking. You suck so much that sometimes I channel Madelyn Kahn in Clue and “flames…from the side of my face, just…flames…” Instead of putting up an overpriced and ugly “graduate student lofts” building, why not pave some of the gravel/useless areas of campus and put up parking lots? Or economize and build some gigantic-ass parking structures, perhaps by greasing the palms of the City of Houston to have them use their eminent domain powers to condemn, oh, I don’t know, the random Chinese food restaurant on campus, or the generic student church (yes, I went there). Just…do something productive, or I swear by Greyskull that I will not be giving you a red cent of my money in 10 years.

That is all for now. I’m sure there will be more. Oh yes, there will be more.

That’s “age-ed” and “learn-ed,” up there. I have to be snooty about words. Because I majored in words.

Well anyway, second week of this semester and already I’m getting swamped. My schedule does lend itself to allowing me some leeway in reading (read: using breaks between classes to read), which is nice. This happened last semester as well, but moreso here.

Three of my four substantive law professors are–how shall I put this–old.

And I don’t mean this in a bad way. They’re just old people. Prof. ConLaw is an older lady; this is her final semester teaching. She’s Jewish, which I find amusing–being a Hebrew myself–and she is very enthusiastic and even bombastic in her teaching style. An anecdote:

Prof: *starts to explain the Cohen case* “…What were these three Jews doing selling lottery tickets? Shameful! I’ll just cover up their names…”

She’s like that all the time.

Prof. Property is amusing as well and has an interesting teaching style: He draws cartoons up on the board. Yep. They help us understand. Really. They do. Also he’s focusing a lot on theory and less on black-letter law, which is a departure from last semester.

Prof. CrimLaw is ALSO entertaining, and might be the most entertaining. Observe:

Prof: “So I will be calling on you so we can have a discussion, and you can all have a discussion with each other…unless you’re all complete dullards.”

Gems, I tell you! Comedic gems!

Prof. Admin is a pretty interesting guy. He used a coin to create a binary number to decide who won some books he gave away. Quite amusing and enjoyable.

Anyway, hopefully this semester chugs along at a nice pace and doesn’t kill me. Fingers crossed.