I'm young, with the soul of an old man

Sorry for the lack of updates, I've been getting settled in in NYC which is going pretty well. The first few days of orientation have been an abundance of free food and way too many gatherings in auditoriums that remind me of high school. But other than that, nothing too noteworthy has occurred.

Until today.

Today marked the first day of classes and lo and behold, therein lies a story. For those of you who have read Scott Turow's book One L (and for those of you that haven't, it basically recounts what it is like to be a One L at Harvard), you'll probably remember him talking about an eeeeevvviiiilllll professor. That's really all I can say because it's been a while since I read the book, but he was the big antagonist of the book but I do remember he is infamous for his dictatorial approach to the Socratic method, sometimes calling on a student for the entirety of the class period. Well, this semester the pleasure of having him falls on to me, for civil procedure. And who also got the dutiful pleasure of being called on on the first day? You guessed it. Yours truly.

The case we were discussing happened to have originated in a court in North Carolina. The professor asks, so do we have any people here from North Carolina? I'm looking around, hoping that someone else is eager to display a little Tar Heel pride. Nope, not today. Not even any of the Dukies willing to raise their hand. So, with a little bit of an eye from my neighbor (who I had introduced myself to just moments earlier and mentioned my Carolina roots) my hand went up. And you know what? I survived. Sure, I haven't felt that dumb since... well, never in an academic setting, but it's something that everyone in our section is going to have to go through. And, I certainly believe there is some merit to what the professor said prior to the class. He acknowledged that he can be harsh, but that we are training to become professionals and he doesn't want to coddle us. Fair enough.

But, BV had offered some advice to me earlier in the week that would have avoided the embarrassment. He wrote me an email that said, "Piece of advice: no matter how brilliant of a point you think you have, just shut up. For the first two weeks, don't say a word." Believe me BV, if I could have kept my mouth shut, I would have.