law school so far, 4 weeks

wondering

Sept. 17, 2006


Law school started late Aug. So it's been four weeks now. So far I'm still able to manage, but just barely.

Language was the major issue in the first week. I had problems to catch my professors in classes. Now I've got used to the some of them, still struggling with Prof. X, the one who's teaching US Constitution. There have been good comments from different people on my English fluency, professors, my fellow students and other local people I talked to. But that's obviously not sufficient for Prof. X's class. She's a great professor but to be honest the course she teaches is not that great. My engineer vocabulary is seriously challenged in her class, plus she speaks fast (well, a former colleague of mine is also a fast speaker but I can get every single word he says. Speed is apparently not an issue here. If Dean K talks about WCDMA standard I guess I would have no problem whatever speed she speaks at. There was one time I met her at the law school hallway and had a short talk about study, life etc. The conversation went pretty well.) What makes things worse is those Indians in the class. They are active and always want to question/comment, while I think I'm not the only one who suffers from their strong accent. Now My ears have got some defensive reaction. Whenever I hear Indian English, my ears refuse functioning right away. I feel terribly unfair, see they can easily understand me as I speak normal English (maybe not as fluent as they do but at least I intend to make myself understood), while I can hardly understand them (in fact I feel I'll never be able to undertand them).

Things are going pretty well otherwise. The other courses I selected are good. Patent Law is taught by a popular professor. His class is quite entertaining and when talking about US patent law, he's really knowledgable. Well the correctness of his knowledge is only limited to US laws. There was once he talked about China, I felt that I was listening CNN report. That was the first class. He spent two hours telling exaggerated stories about Brasil, India and China, how these coutries disrespect intellectual property etc. So I guess the students from these countries all felt uncomfortable somehow. At the end of the class, he successfully angered rest of the non-US students who had not been offended yet when he stated that "American consumers will decide the world market". After the class I talked to a classmate from Switzerland. He said he was pretty angry and was about to ask "hey, where is Europe?"...


This is pretty much what I have experienced from my classes so far, maybe a few weeks later I'll say something completely different.

zhangyl

Take it easy and you will be better and better.