Some frustrated friendly advice to law school classmates

So here’s something that baffles me every single semester about this time… a professor hands out a sheet of sample test questions. (Wait, that’s not the baffling part.)

That professor then gives you two options: (1) he will go through the questions and explain, in detail, the workings of his brain for how and why the questions were created, and how they are to be answered properly, or (2) students can pepper him with questions of their own that may or may not have absolutely anything to do with what the professor considers important, or test-worthy.

This in itself does not baffle me.

What does baffle me, however, is how excitedly people will leap into the second option, utterly bypassing the invaluable opportunity to hear the professor’s explanations of his own questions, and completely wasting the time of their fellow classmates who would kinda rather hear what the professor considers important and test-worthy, than listen to what each individual student may or may not be clear about.

The professor is giving you the opportunity to see the man behind the curtain, the inner-workings of his test preparation and interpretation, and you’re tossing it aside. Glibly. Good god, you’re Matt Lauer to the professor’s Tom Cruise? Geez, that metaphor train jumped the tracks.

Folks, here’s a more concrete thought: If a senior partner ever walks up to you with an example assignment and says that you can either pick his brain about why it was done that way, how it was done that way, and what he knows from past experience, OR you can just start blindly shooting in the dark with questions of your own…

CHOOSE THE FORMER.

It’s a friendly piece of advice, and should you choose to ignore it, that actually benefits me in the long-run as a potential competitor in the legal market, so use it at your own will, or don’t. Whatevs.

Sigh. I wish we covering the sample test questions right now. Since we’re not, it’s back to reading entertainment news websites and wondering why I bothered showing up to “class” today.