Have you ever heard anyone tell you they hated a subject and when you asked them why, they say it was because they did not like the teacher? That was me after a bad middle school math teacher. Being able to teach is a completely different skill set than understanding the subject, in my opinion. And arguably, the stakes for finding a good teacher are never higher in your academic career than in law school.
We’ve all seen the scary law professors who kick students out of class for not reading the pre-assigned material (Legally Blonde), who demand feats of knowledge (Paper Chase), and others that make us question whether law school professors are here to help us or to be so tough on us that nothing in our professional careers seem too bad. Luckily at Loyola, none of those stereotypes are really true. I truly believe that my law school experience has been positively impacted in a major way by the professors. They are pillars of our community and sometimes it feels surreal we’re learning from such impressive people.
Many professors contribute to the “Loyola Community,” which is always referencing the caring, professional, and helpful nature of our campus culture. Don’t start thinking our professors make law school easier than other professors would, because they definitely still challenge you in class and increase your tolerance for reading late into the night, but they do approach their students with the understanding that we’re all trying our best.
My law school professors are much more accessible than my undergraduate professors. They have office hours, will meet with you outside of office hours, give you their phone numbers, and tell you to reach out to them even after the semester is over. They truly want you to have access to their help. They want to be accessible because they understand we are grappling with difficult and sometimes counterintuitive material – they had to grapple with it as students too.
Many people in my 1L section even loved our professors so much, they’ll take an upper division class specifically because of the professor teaching it. I am also 100% guilty of this. Maybe that seems hard to understand now, but once you get to Loyola you will completely understand. This may sound biased, but I’m pretty sure we have some of the best professors out there.
See you in the next one,
Kelsey