Columbia 2013 Forum

[Sogui]

Anyone else get the shaft with the whole Rapaczynski incident? I hope the professor is all right, but damn if that didn't screw up a lot of things for me.

No more small section, 2 of my classes have banned laptops and the other is extremely restrictive of them. I'm glad I set up my organization system around OneNote so that I can do back to my slow, sloppy lefty handwriting and incoherent organization system.

/rant

[swc65]

Anyone else get the shaft with the whole Rapaczynski incident? I hope the professor is all right, but damn if that didn't screw up a lot of things for me.

No more small section, 2 of my classes have banned laptops and the other is extremely restrictive of them. I'm glad I set up my organization system around OneNote so that I can do back to my slow, sloppy lefty handwriting and incoherent organization system.

/rant

I am a little pissed about the laptop banning too. I got a new laptop just so I could be more organized. Also, mine is a tablet so there is little chance of distracting others since my screen will not be up. I also won't be taking "excessive notes" since my notes are handwritten on the tablet.

I am worried about returning the books too because I have already highlighted some of it


On the bright side, my weekend now starts at 12pm on Thursday!!

[CG614]

.

[Sogui]

Not being self-centered, I have no beef against the poor guy.

I am simply yelling into the wind (and possibly at Professor Long) about the inconvenience that we're going through. Having to pay more for books, some possibly not being able to return books, and then this whole policy of "no laptops period" that is now set in 2/3 of my classes with the other 1 "strongly discouraging" them.

I could have just brought a desktop from home if I knew I would have to resort to my chicken-scratch in a majority of my classes. My laptop actually allowed me to keep a coherent system of organization and easier and more coherent note taking (not to mention faster and easier on the wrist), while being able to copy notes from briefs or even using sophisticated OCR to bring in editable text from scanned sources all under one notebook in OneNote.

At least Goldberg (civpro) tries to reach a middle ground of "If my TA sees you browsing non-related material you will be warned" as a defense against the risk of people viewing "distracting" material on their laptops. An outright ban is just a very crude solution from professors.

Edit: Looks like if you wrote in your book you won't be getting full price back. Also they will buy back regular books, but if you rented them (I did), they will only return a portion. I won't get angry until I know what the "portion" is, I better be getting a good return on a once-opened 3-day old book rental.

[CG614]

Reviving this lost thread. How are you all doing?

[swc65]

Reviving this lost thread. How are you all doing?

Yeah this thread is totally dead. What happened? No real life since the torts mayhem over a month ago!

[Foozle]

Getting by, getting by.

[Foozle]

What are you guys doing for the elective?

[JG Hall]

Sucks you guys don't get Legal Persuasion, but Briffault and Hemphill are both awesome professors, just fyi.

[Sogui]

I have Law and Economics with Victor Goldberg as my top choice right now, but I'm thinking of swapping it for intl' law or legislation.

I wasn't an econ major and I worry that econ majors are going to swarm this class. Do you all think having a non-econ background would affect my ability to enjoy/succeed in this class?

[CG614]

.

[Hattori Hanzo]

I have Law and Economics with Victor Goldberg as my top choice right now, but I'm thinking of swapping it for intl' law or legislation.

I wasn't an econ major and I worry that econ majors are going to swarm this class. Do you all think having a non-econ background would affect my ability to enjoy/succeed in this class?

Do you have any trouble understanding Posner's opinions?

[CG614]

Legal Methods grade is in. I was soooo worried about that one... (please read an immense amount of sarcasm)

[swc65]

Woohoo! Last Memo of the semester turned in!

[JetSetter68]

.

[somewhatwayward]

anyone take the shaw exam today?

[CG614]

Schedules out... I have a killer Thursday, but no class on Friday again! Sorry to the Judge Lynch Fri 8am peeps. For what it is worth, I hear he is awesome!

[maudlinstreet]

hey, so I'm currently working on an updated TLS profile for Columbia. if you'd be willing to answer a few questions about the school to help supplement the profile, send me a message!

[of Benito Cereno]

when are our grades posted?

[Sogui]

If you didn't know, the "curve" is posted on the same page as our incoming grades:

https://wwws-db.law.columbia.edu/lawnet ... dation.pdf


I was hoping this would be the place to be to have an honest discussion of grades (or jobs, the weather, your sports team, whatever) since of course it's taboo for real conversations, maybe inject some life in this thread too.

Besides the WikiCU stuff, can anyone confirm that a 3.41 is the cutoff for Stone Scholars and 3.81 for the Kent?

[imchuckbass58]

If you didn't know, the "curve" is posted on the same page as our incoming grades:

https://wwws-db.law.columbia.edu/lawnet ... dation.pdf


I was hoping this would be the place to be to have an honest discussion of grades (or jobs, the weather, your sports team, whatever) since of course it's taboo for real conversations, maybe inject some life in this thread too.

Besides the WikiCU stuff, can anyone confirm that a 3.41 is the cutoff for Stone Scholars and 3.81 for the Kent?

3.41 is in fact the cutoff for Stone. One note: They don't round. So if you have a 3.409 at the end of the year, you are not Stone.

Kent is more complicated. First, you can have a GPA of 3.8 or above, in which case you are Kent no matter what.

The other way to get Kent is a bit complicated but basically:
-Do you have any B- or below? If yes, no Kent. If no, continue on.
-Drop your lowest grade.
-Are the remainder of your grades A-range (A+, A or A?) If no, no Kent, if yes, continue on.
-Are half of your A-range grades As or A+s (i.e., not A-s?). If so, you are a Kent Scholar.

Thus, you could have A, A, A, A-, A-, A-, B and still get Kent. This could be a GPA as low as 3.69 (if 2 of your 3 As were in 3-credit classes).

Regardless, roughly 12 people make Kent 1L year, and the majority make it the first, simple way.

[Polka]

I was hoping this would be the place to be to have an honest discussion of grades

Does that mean you've already gotten yours??? I am jealous. I have only gotten one so far, and it was for my easiest class, and it wasn't too fantastic, so maybe I should be glad I haven't gotten the others yet.

[Sogui]

I was hoping this would be the place to be to have an honest discussion of grades

Does that mean you've already gotten yours??? I am jealous. I have only gotten one so far, and it was for my easiest class, and it wasn't too fantastic, so maybe I should be glad I haven't gotten the others yet.

I'm sitting at 2/3 waiting for Long's torts grade (she took on double her expected class size). People are all wildly speculating about how long it will take her to get a grade out. I think Long knew what a mess it was going to be and won't screw us over (beyond making us wait to the deadline), plus most of her test was short answer with a simple grading rubric.

Her grade decides if this was an 'alright' semester or a great semester for me. I learned that I should have spent more time taking tests under real time constraints because that is what cost me. I managed to get away with a good K's grade precisely because I had 8 hours and didn't find myself burping up the first thing that came to my head like I did on the Civpro policy question that I got to with 30 minutes left...

I feel for those who are still waiting on 2 or 3 grades though.


How do Prof's feel about follow-up discussions of an exam (like just talking about where our exam fell short, for future exams)?
One prof. just posted some model answers (one by yours truly =P) and said "yea go look at those" to our class, the other hasn't said anything - grades came up and that was that. Either way they really don't open the door to talking about this, which seems crazy that you would just get a grade and absolutely no understanding of where you went wrong, no model answer, etc...

[Alyssa]

Still waiting on ALL grades, including LPW... Really? How hard is that one to grade?

[Polka]

Has anyone gotten their "grade" for LPW? Maybe they are releasing them all at once after the course eval period ends.

In terms of discussing your exam with your professor, I haven't done it yet (or even picked up my one graded exam to see if there is anything unclear about the comments), and I might be deluding myself, but professors here seem for the most part to actually care about students and how much we are learning, so I think they would welcome a follow-up discussion. My Legal Methods instructor had a post-mortem to help us avoid making the same n00b mistakes on our graded exams, and my one professor who has posted grades emailed the class to tell us, among other things, when we can come discuss the exam.