radyo, TV, and the cold

I was caught radyo-ing to Pink yesterday during Civil Law Review. The prof told Pink to sit down and insisted that I finish the recitation. Okay.


The radyo is one of those things that are native to law school. Law classes here are usually conducted by using what we call the Socratic Method, which in officialspeak is something akin to some sort of discussion going on between the professor and the student. This is supposed to facilitate learning, making it two-way. Thus, both the teacher and the student should (might?) learn something from each other.

In truth, the Socratic Method the law schools use is a modified version. What really happens is, the professor shuffles cards which have the students’ names on them, picks one, and asks the unlucky student to recite. It’s really closer to a “Question Hour” where the teacher asks and the student answers. The number of questions asked may be as few as a single question or as many as a barrage of questions. (A professor of mine times recits at thirty minutes per student.) The student isn’t supposed to look at his or her notes while reciting. When someone does, the teacher makes the necessary deductions from the grade. Or the student is quietly or severely reprimanded, depending on the professor’s wont.

Most of the time, your seatmates will try to be helpful and whisper the answer to you when you’re (the student who’s reciting is) momentarily befuddled (or totally out of it). That’s radyo. It’s disallowed. But a lot of students do it anyway, for reasons of comity. Translation: I watch your back, you watch mine. When it’s their turn to recite, they’ll be appreciative of whatever help they can get.

There’s an urban legend going around the Halls of Malcolm on the art of the radyo. (Yes, it's an art.) One evening, a student who was not able to study for the meeting’s coverage was called by the professor to recite. Before the prof could start to ask questions, the lights went out. The professor insisted on holding classes. He started asking questions. Since the guy called to recite didn’t know zilch, and because it was dark anyway, his seatmate answered the questions for him.

There is also a variation of the radyo which we fondly call TV. TV is when you write the answer in a piece of paper and you shove the answer to the seatmate. Quiet, and, if executed properly, surreptitious.

Yesterday, the teacher caught me for both radyo-ing and TV-ing. Suffice it to say that I was shocked. Most everyone did it; but I was the only one caught. Argh. For a couple of minutes, I was too flustered to answer correctly the questions the prof threw at me.

The silly thing about it is, the answers I was supplying Pink were all wrong. She was listening to my radyo and looking at my TV’s and shaking her head. Wrong, she was mouthing. She thought of the correct answers herself. Hay.


Finally…

The mornings have been cold of late. I don’t know if it’s because we’re having an extended winter somewhere or if it’s the greenhouse gases finally making their presence known. But I really shouldn’t be complaining. We’ve one more excuse not to wake up too early in the mornings. Yawn.