Thursday, March 09, 2006

Random Rant #8

I remember it vividly. It was a Monday morning, about six weeks into the start of my first semester of law school. I was counting down the seconds until my class was over. The professor began wrapping up his lecture when he uttered six words that I had come to love during my undergraduate years: “On Wednesday, class will be cancelled.” The students in the classroom, myself included, all gasped and subtly cheered in delight, happy to get any sort of break from the monotony and predictability of our schedule. Then, just as our balloon had been inflated, our professor unexpectedly and cruelly stuck a needle into it. “We will have a make-up class Friday morning at 8am.”

What? Make-up class? Whoever heard of such a ridiculous thing? Why the hell would we make up a class? This isn’t baseball, where a rainout results in a doubleheader at some point later in the season. During undergrad, a cancelled class meant a respite from class that day. Chalk it up to fate, bad scheduling, or good luck, but a cancelled class was a sacred occasion to be cherished and spent however you wanted. However, law school has managed to suck the fun out of being a student just a little bit more by taking this away from us too.

If a law professor can’t make it to a particular class, in my mind, he or she has three options:

1) Just let it go. Give us a break. We can do without your infinite wisdom for a day.

2) If you must hold a make-up class, it should be completely and totally 100% optional.

3) Lets throw it back to the high school days and bring in a substitute teacher who we can abuse and ignore until she just gives up and lets us run wild for the hour while she sits quietly in the corner, looking at her watch. Now this is a class I'd actually enjoy attending.

Now, at this point, I must make a confession. I have never actually attended a make-up class. I refuse to. The very principle of it is laughable to me. My schedule says that I have a class on certain days at a certain time. That time is law school time. (Note: I know that I skip a lot of classes. But I go to more than I skip, thanks to our attendance policy. So save your skepticism.) Time that class is not scheduled is Mike time. When I miss class, I miss it. I don’t expect the professor to come teach me at a time more convenient to my schedule. I only wish they gave their students the same courtesy.