I Am Whatever You Say I Am

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!

If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!

How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

This is so not true, but I'll take it. Now where's my crown and fiery halo? They were here just a minute ago and I think they might come in handy when I have to go to school and try to convince my professors not to flunk me. ;-) [link via a mi parecer]

UPDATE: It looks like Windoze users should not take this quiz —it might be loading crapware onto your computer! See the comments for more info.

Posted 06:31 AM | Comments (5) | life generally

Streaming Law School

I've missed some class recently (shock!), but thanks to Passover, at least one of my professors videotaped several of the classes I missed. As I watch these taped lectures, I realize once again how broken the learning model is at a major law school like GW. What do I miss by having not been in class and watching the class on video instead? Absolutely nothing. Sure, there was the one day per semester in each of my classes where I had to "perform" the ritual of regurgitating the day's reading, acting as little more than a foolish foil for my professors' otherwise largely canned lectures, but aside from those 4 days of class, I might have watched the whole semester on video. I would have learned just as much. In fact, I might have learned more; it's nice to be able to rewind to listen again to the confusing parts.

So what do I pay for in law school? Why doesn't GW just package videos for me to buy, rather than making me move to DC and actually show up on campus for classes? I can think of many reasons—attending class is only one part of a full law school experience—but it's hard to shake the feeling that the attendance requirements are just a mask for the fact that big law schools are just degree factories that long ago sacrificed learning models for business models. Sure, we do learn this way, but let's just drop the pretense, shall we? Charge me half the tuition, send me the videos, I'll watch them at home, and we can all stop pretending there's really a need to pay for the plasma screens in the lobby that no one even looks at. Grrrr.

I'm not dissing my professors. They are almost uniformly terrific this semester (as they were last semester, w/one notable exception), and their lectures—canned or not—are generally very very good. Also, I'm not really advocating online learning; it comes with its own problems. That doesn't change the fact that when you're dealing with classes of more than 100 students each, actual physical attendance seems to add very little value.

Oh, but don't mind me. I'm probably just bitter that I've missed so much class and am going to do so poorly on exams. ;-)

Posted 06:10 AM | law school