To understand it, we need to break it down into two words: mank and ind. YourAuthor: Help. What do these words mean? I was saved by “The Chat Room” dozens of times during my three years of law school. Sometimes these thoughts can be comments on the class, personal opinions, or esoteric observations about the nature of mankind.[3] More commonly, they are jokes and pop culture references. And most of all, there is the looming possibility of a laughing outburst. The one corner of the Internet that seems to be well known to students but still a bit of a mystery to professors is Instant Messaging. With IM, those thoughts, jokes, and oh-so-important answers discussed above can be delivered to your computer screen in a flash. In the “old days,” if you were summoned to engage in the Socratic dialogue, it was just you and the professor in a fight to the intellectual death. Trust me. [2] Yes, I realize the Internet was around “a few years ago,” but many classrooms were not yet equipped with network access, wireless or otherwise. This phenomenon provides obvious social benefits in addition to universally acknowledged academic support in the form of study groups. It’s from yesterday’s hypo. That is, unless you have a highly developed sense of guilt, in which case you might feel terrible if you lead a friend to the wrong conclusion. YourAuthor: Uh oh, here he comes. [5] And, as we know from movies like iRobot and shows like Battlestar Galactica, this increasing dependence on computers and machines will one day lead to a world where the robots control and terrorize us. If I get called on I’m going to need some help. There were plenty of class discussions and cases that I understood better than some of the people around me and in those instances, I was able to provide answers to my friends and to give them some of the words, phrases, and rulings they needed to survive a round of questioning.[8]
Of course, like anything in life, chat room reliance is not a perfect system. JDsHaveMoreFun: I’m up for going to the business school for lunch if people feel like walking. It is no secret that students check their emails incessantly during class, and, in fact, many professors will make jokes about it and acknowledge the practice.[4] Professors also know all about surfing the net and playing solitaire and other tried and true ways in which humans now use computers to keep themselves entertained at all times.[5] The great academic minds teaching at the head of the class don’t like any of this, certainly, but it is a necessary tradeoff in order to allow students access to word processing software that increases note-taking capabilities, as well as the vast legal resources available online. YourAuthor: Hey guys, be on the ready, keep your head on a swivel, I just saw Professor X look my way. You are still engaging in the process of testing your legal reasoning, but you have the added benefit of someone else taking the risk of delivering the theory out loud. LawStudent119: So, what does everyone want to do for lunch once we get out of this class? SocraticWarrior: Didn’t do the reading? And when you surround yourself with people that you have chosen to hang out with (indicating a shared sense of humor) and that are very clever (due to their high intellectual quotients), you run the risk of people writing very funny things, very often. God bless technology. [8] Feeding a classmate the answer is actually pretty exciting. And regardless of your eventual fate, your friends were merely spectators; much like the ancient gladiators who stood watching Russell Crowe joust with a tiger. This may sound ridiculous, but the biggest danger with relying on the chat room to get through class is the possibility that someone will type something hilarious and you will burst out laughing in the middle of a lecture. YourAuthor: I knew it! The dreaded Socratic method was rendered impotent in the face of Instant Messaging software. And on occasion, they can be the exact answers the professor is looking for – answers formulated outside of the Socratic spotlight that are otherwise escaping you at the moment you need them most. [1] If I may, a toast to Al Gore before we move on. JDsHaveMoreFun: We’ve got your back. Hey, anything to make law school easier, right? And young people just so happen to represent the majority of the students streaming through the classroom doors of law schools everywhere. So it is kind of a no-lose situation. But it worked, almost without fail, to the point where I stopped worrying about being called on altogether. YourAuthor: That sounds good. YourAuthor: I was working on my screenplay. It’s a mystery and that’s why so is mankind.”
[4] Although they are careful not to condone it. From times where the answer was barely eluding me to times when I honestly had no idea what we were even discussing in class, all that was required was to quickly type “help!” into my chat window (while telling the professor that I didn’t “quite understand” what he “meant by the question” in order to buy some time) and seconds later, information was flowing my way. If they don’t, they had better get on it, or someone might show them this footnote and make them feel pretty inadequate. Obviously, IM has been around for several years and has even become the primary means of communication for many people, but it doesn’t seem to be universally known to many adults born before 1975 or so.[6] In other words, it is an aspect of the Internet that is largely used by young people. Now the thoughts of others can be made available to you in the blink of an eye. [3] If you believe Jack Handy, the nature of mankind can’t be understood. Just sign on through a service like AOL or iChat, open a chat window, and stash it in the corner of your screen.[7] You can type comments and it looks just like you are plugging away at your notes. (Five minutes later)
YourAuthor: Nice. You’ll get the idea. [6] IM belongs to Generations “Whatever-Comes-After-X”, much like Myspace, Facebook, YouTube, and other interactive social networking functions. There are going to be times where your friends are paying just as little attention as you to the discussion or where the issue is tricky enough to elude everyone that happens to be online. [7] Also be sure to turn the volume off. So, did anyone see Lost last night …
Unless you go out of your way to be a recluse and a total jerk, you will quickly make friends at your law school. [9] But nothing too sad, because you don’t want to start sobbing in class. You get good at maintaining a “game face,” but even the best among us slip up. And when several of your friends are in the same class, you can start an entire chat room, which involves everyone and creates a pool of thoughts, jokes, and - most importantly – answers. However, this network of friends can also perform one other very important task: it can make you look really good in class or, more importantly, save you in a mid-class emergency. Not to say that I was always taking and never giving. Then, when you get outside and regain your composure, just think how much better it is to be afraid of laughing than to be afraid of the Socratic method. From Deep Thoughts: “What is mankind? Even that isn’t all bad though, because your friend will be so glad to have something to say he won’t even care if it is wrong. There is no refreshing of screens, no large windows to toggle, and very little effort required. Note: This is a long one … but a good one! There are also the rare occurrences where the wireless network might be down (a truly awful thing). That is even worse than laughing. Just chalk it up to an occupational hazard and when it happens, try to imagine something terribly sad, like the passing of a family pet.[9]
Finally, if you do laugh in class, just pretend to have an allergic reaction and leave as quickly as possible. SocraticWarrior: I think he’s looking for something about the Last Clear Chance Doctrine. Sometimes all it took was a single word or concept to get me on the right track, other times I had to engage a friend on the other side of that chat connection and draw out the answers I needed. One method for exchanging these thoughts, jokes, and critical answers is through email. I owe you guys. This is all possible because of the magic of the Internet.[1] Decades ago, and even a few years ago[2], the ability to instantly receive the thoughts of your friends and colleagues was an impossible dream, unless you were blessed with some form of ESP or could write and pass notes with astounding speed. Now, nearly every law school classroom in America has wireless access. I wanted to find an actual, saved IM conversation from one of my law school classes, but this recreation will have to do.
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