Working on my summer/fall schedules. Every time I think I have it planned, a new wrinkle pops up. Just found out that I have to take tax (despite my every intention to avoid it completely!) because it is a prerequisite for 22 (yes, 22) classes at school (i.e., Business Planning, Estate Planning), some of which are important for my career. Oh yeah, and it’s also a bar course. Bleech. It is only offered in the fall and then not again until the year I graduate. 
So, damn it, I am stuck! 
Next question is whether I should take a seminar (50-page paper, no exam) this fall with a great teacher or a regular course in an area of law that is interesting but not applicable to my career path?
Finally, if you had a choice between a six-week summer course that was wicked hard but necessary and a six-week course that was much easier but had fewer people so the curve is sharper, which would you take? Is it better to take the harder, necessary course over a full semester while balancing two other courses or to concentrate on that one course for six weeks and get it over with? The hard professor is the only one who teaches it and it’s offered regularly both in summer and in the fall/spring so I have a choice. The “easy” course has a lot of role playing and oral argument and might actually be hard for me with the way my doped-up brain is right now. Bleech. What to do, what to do?!?!?
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Tags: Law School
Part of becoming a 2L is realizing that there is no such thing as a class that is important for your career. My selection criteria are (1) who teaches it (2) who teaches it (3) what time is it at and (4) is the subject matter at least tolerable. Wills & Trusts usually fails that last one.
WTH is up with tax? I successfully managed to graduate and pass the bar without taking any stinking tax class.
Personally, if the hard class is necessary, I would take it over the summer. That was always my plan in undergrad–take the suckiest classes in the shortest semester offered. It’s the ripping off the band-aid approach. It’s gonna hurt either way, but at least the pain doesn’t last as long.
Oh, and my approach to class picking wasn’t what was relevant to my career, but rather what was relevant to the bar. I really do think it helped my bar study when I had a background in the class.
And I have to disagree somewhat with gliman–the rule/procedural classes that were state-specific have been very helpful. But, yeah, pretty much everythiing else is so theorhetical that it is useless. And anything hands-on, like clinics or trial ad is really helpful as opposed to sitting in another class surfing the net and regurgitating your outline on an exam.
Oh–and on the seminar, do you have a writing requirement? We had to take 2 seminars to meet our writing requirement and they were usually hard to get into. So if you’re really interested and need a writing class, go ahead and get it over with. I made the mistake of taking both of my seminars and my clinic at the same time–which made for a very semester (but only 1 exam!).
Gosh, I’m chatty today.
Glad to see you posting, hope everything is going well.
Yeah, LC, that was my plan with tax, too. They must have figured me out… which is why they made it a mandatory pre-requisite for so many corporate law courses. Now that I’m working for a large corporation’s in-house legal department, I figure I should really take mergers & acquisitions and some other business courses. At a minimum, I don’t want to effectively shut the door on taking them by not registering for tax.
We only have to take one seminar class to graduate (or do a journal, which I’ve pretty much decided not to do because I think the time commitment will kill me). I figure why not take it with this professor who is well-known as being really interesting, laid-back and fun and is teaching a topic area that I have work experience in and which offers a wide range of topics on which we could write our paper. Do you usually get to pick your topic in a seminar?
50 pages is a LOOOOOOOOOOONG paper! Otherwise, I’d tell you to do it. I’ve taken lots of classes totally inapplicable to the BAR and/or possible work plans . . . my reasoning was two-fold. First, I knew I’d forget whatever it was by the time I have to take the bar, anyway, so I’d have tot aech it to myself. And second, law school sucks hard enough – why make it worse by taking crappy classes?
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6 weeks isn’t enough time for me to learn a really complex area of the law – it has to sink in over time. If it were my decision, I’d go for the easier (with sharper curve) class. Actually, I’d take neither – I hate summer school because it’s not enough time!
Good luck. Choosing classes is never much fun, because there’s either too many interesting classes or not enough interesting classes in a semester!
Turns out I was wrong about tax. My classmate just freaked me out. Yes, it’s a bar course, but I think that the two classes for which it is a pre-requisite that I wanted to take have “cousin” courses that are similar enough that it doesn’t matter. So I think I’m going to skip it and take the classes I want to next semester. Still trying to decide about the seminar, though… Oh, and I decided to take the harder summer course this summer as “penance” for not taking tax. LOL! That is a course I *do* have to take so I may as well suffer through and get it over with sooner rather than later.