why I'm beginning to hate my class...

so here's the situation:

there is one guy who is on a mission to make everyone in my class hate me because I know stuff and I sometimes ask questions to prod the professor into going a little deeper on a subject. he usually holds session after class with a small group of comiserators.

unfortunately, it seems that many people are charmed by his obnoxious behavior.

what happened today:

Class: torts Topic: negligence per se.

so we've been going through the unexcused violation of a non-tort statute rule, and the five exceptions.

today, the professor feels it is important enough to mention that CA doesn't follow this rule, but has essentially the same rule couched in the terms of a "rebuttable presumption."

the professor makes it clear that only the paralegals with litigation background will find this interesting because we don't take evidence until next year. He wanted everyone else to know that the two work basically the same.

It was the end of class, and I was still curious about this "rebuttable presumption" issue -- specifically, is this just a judicial efficiency policy of burden shifting, OR...more interestingly, is there anything more than the five exceptions that could be introduced to rebut?

(note: I was thinking of the guy who "forgot the intersection was there" -- I was thinking that although this argument doesn't fall within the five exceptions, it could suffice for rebuttable presumption if the driver was elderly or had some kind of memory problem. rebuttable presumptions are based on evidence, and if you can get enough of it together, you might be successful.)

So I ask, "beyond the five exceptions, what else could there be?"

This apparently sent the hate-crew on a spin.

So after class, this guy begins his session. What I overheard of the conversation went something like this, "why did she have to ask that? If the professor wanted us to know, he would have told us..." another student interjecting "shhh. she's right behind you."

This is where I have to laugh sometimes. Unfortunately, this self-delusion that "the professor will teach you everything you need to know" is a fairly common one among my classmates. perhaps this is the lesson to be learned with first semester grades.

Firstly, sure. The professor will teach you everything you need to know... to get a C.
However, the professor is NOT going to teach you everything you need to know to get an A.

(or with my school's insane grading system...he will teach you what you need to know to fall within the 2/3 deviation from the normative mean...he will not teach you what you need to know to be a high end outlier.)

you know that this is a testable issue because the professor told us so. He said, "if you want full credit on your exam, you will explain that the negligence per se issue can be handled in three different ways, blah blah blah, rebuttable presumption."

but full credit, especially when we have this crazy grading system, doesn't just mean spilling the words "rebuttable presumption" on the page...everyone will do that...there needs to be some indication you actually understand how this works if you want to pick up extra points. "show your work" as they say.

now I understand that absolutely no one in my class knows what a rebuttable presumption is, nor should they...yet. but when a professor takes the time to tell you something is out there that only the "litigation paralegals in the class will understand," this is an indication that unless you find those "litigation paralegals" in your class and suck the information out of their brains, you are going to miss some points here.

so what I wonder is why these guys can't just come to me and say, "hey, you know about this rebuttable presumption stuff...what's it all about?"

oh well. maybe I don't want all my "stuff" to be sucked out of my brain anyway. these fools are hardly worth it. This one guy in particular is going to be yet another idiot giving lawyers a bad name. I can only hope he miserably fails the Professional Responsibility exam, because there is really no other way to weed out people like this.