the law of discovery

Engineers, as a rule, are not compulsively early to meetings or classes. Being too early is, after all, an inefficient use of time.

Figuring that it wouldn't do to be late on my first day of class, I arrived a full six minutes early, a copious amount of time in my view. You can imagine my horror, then, when I opened the door to the civil procedure classroom and found a) the professor standing silently at the front of the room and b) almost every single seat in the classroom taken.

I panicked. I thought perhaps my clock had been wrong, and clattered noisily into the nearest seat as quickly as possible. The entire class and the professor watched impassively. I spilled my hairbrush and some pens out of my bag in my hurry to unpack, but as I bent over to gather them up I realized that nobody was saying anything. Not the professor, not the students, nobody. So I took a deep breath, and opened my laptop and waited. Silence. We all waited, professor staring at students, and students staring back.

At precisely 9:40 am, Prof. Civ Pro started talking and my law school career began.

Civil procedure passed in a haze. Though friendly enough, Prof. Civ Pro is old-fashioned, which means we are addressed with our last names, and he engages in classic Socratic discussion. This, combined with the subject matter, means I'm utterly terrified of this class, but it was only one hour today, and I managed to not call any further attention to myself before I escaped off to my next class.

Property is a two hour class, but it was a totally different experience. For one thing, I went to class twenty minutes early, along with most of the other students. I wonder at these alien people who arrive at a class 20 minutes before it begins, but since that seems to be the rule of the place, I joined them for property. Prof. Property also engages in Socratic discussion, but so far it appears to be a kinder, gentler Socratic discussion. Furthermore, I find Property inherently fascinating, and the class went by so quickly that I was surprised when the professor said that time was up.

I could write for hours about my experiences today alone, but fortunately for you, I've been studying for hours tonight already and my little brain can't take any more. 'Night, all.