Overheard in Criminal Procedure tonight during discussion of law governing identification procedures:
Professor: Don’t worry about typing all this down right now. I have a handout that will help clarify. So you can all turn off your computers. Well, except for those of you playing computer games or e-mailing your friends.
No related posts.
I hate when he says that. I hate when I’m typing out everything transcript like BECAUSE HE REPEATS IT THREE TIMES AS IF TRYING TO LET THE SLOW KIDS TYPE IT OUT and then says we don’t have to type it out.
The story I heard following class is that Professor sat in on a certain Crim Law class and saw people emailing and playing games during the lecture. He then announced to his Evidence class how shocked he was to see this, and hinted that he might possibly consider banning laptops from his classes next year (though I’m not sure how much truth there is to this last part).
The moral, of course, is to be aware of who is sitting around and behind you in the classroom! If a professor or an ABA rep is around, maybe take one for the team and actually look like you’re paying attention and taking notes, even if it is in HER Crim Law class.
Just another symptom of the hand-holding, self-esteem-affirming mess law schools have become. Do you think John Hart would have been on Facebook during contracts with Prof. Kingsfield? Absolutely not. Many of my classes are straight lectures and if the professor does happen to call on someone, that person can usually just say “pass” and someone else gets called on. I guarantee you if professors uniformly expected intelligent, high-level Socractic dialog from every student, and the school wasn’t afraid to flunk out the stragglers, there would not be a problem with Facebook and BlockBreaker.
Sound and fury signifying nothing. The schools need the cash from the Facebookers and aces alike. Law school is a business, and you’re not going to give paying customers the toss for no reason.
That’s pretty much my point. If you want everyone paying attention and not playing games, do something worth paying attention to. Otherwise, quit complaining about it.