Starting at Wayne State Law

Last week was both the first day of classes at UM-Flint and at Wayne State. The whole hiring process at Wayne State was a bit clunky--delays with HR, payroll, problems with my "access card" (the swipe card that gets me in the building), email problems...so I was a bit surprised when the semester started and I was actually scheduled to teach a class. My class meets from 6 pm until 8 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays so by the time I get to work, most people have left for the day. Simon teaches two classes on Tuesdays/Thursdays and does not get home until mid afternoon. With all the construction on I75, driving to Wayne State can be a bit intense, so I am worried the whole drive down that I will be late. So far, that hasn't happened. Here is my office, room 3333. The building is massive and very strangely designed. The 3rd floor (where most faculty offices are) sort of spirals around and I haven't quite got the hang of it yet. I have to take exactly the same route every time I go in otherwise I get lost.

My office is actually quite nice. It's big and has two massive windowns. (Many of the offices are on the inside of the building and don't have windows at all.) I was also pleasantly surprised to find a brand new computer on my desk when I moved in. The best part is there is a big green circle on the desktop that, when I click on it, it immediately contacts an IT guy who works in the law building and then rushed to my aide in a computer emergency. So far I haven't had one, but it's good to know that there is someone who spends their whole like just waiting for me to be in crisis. When I moved in, the shelves were on the opposite wall, and there were too many of them. I took all but three small ones down and hid the rest in a mysterious little closet tucked away behind my door. There were also a lot of spots on the walls where someone had chipped the paint off. I bought a small pot of paint in a similar color and fixed up the dings. Now, if you don't look too closely, it looks fine.

Amazingly, I've already had a student come to see me. This was last Thursday. I was sitting around, dealing will law school requirements (I am supposed to promise to speak to media/journalists if a legal crisis comes up. I was given a huge form to fill out that committed me to dealing with this sort of thing. I tried to come up with the least likely possibilities (new legislation dealing with disability rights advocacy--never going to happen). I also said I would only deal with emails rather than phone calls or live interviews, so I can always write up useless responses that no one would want to quote. Anyway, in the midst of all this one of my students came by to tell me he was in the grips of a horrific migraine and would not be able to come to class that evening. He was also in a panic about the class--worried he would not be able to write papers, and would fail the class, lose his job, be booted from the country...it was easy to see why he had a migraine. The class I teach is a Master's level course aimed at non-American students who have a law degree from their home country. The idea is that the course I teach--Survey of US Law---is a low level, massively broad but superficial introduction to the legal system. Then, the idea is, they have three more semesters to take more advanced courses in areas of law that interest them. The problem is, I found out, that all but Migraine Student have been here 18 months and have already taken three semesters of classes. I asked them why they were in an introduction course aimed at beginners and they had no idea. One speculated that there had been massive scheduling problems in the past and that this is the first time this survey course was offered. Yeesh. So, I'm not sure what to do with the class given that most things we will discuss will be redundant. I did assign only essays and no exams for the course assignments, and that seems to have them all in paroxysms of anxiety. That's particularly stupid as three are from Germany and the fourth a Bangladeshi woman who has lived in England for the past eight years and got her law degree there, all have excellent English. (Yes, there are only four students in the class.) But, they are older students, work for prestigious foreign corporations and were told by their employers to "get an American law degree of some sort." So that is what they are doing. Once they have their LLM (the master's degree) they may take the bar exam in the state of New York. At THAT point, assuming they pass, they will be able to act as license lawyers on behalf of their company, doing legal work in the US. So, I suppose they are worried that, if they fail, they will have to carry the shame of being duds at their jobs. They are all very nice, reasonable people so I think their worries are ill-founded. I guess my job will be to help them figure out how to make it through all these hurdles.

On top of finding out that the course I designed was almost completely inappropriate for my students, I was locked out of the third floor of the law building TWICE on Tuesday and so had to deal with calling public safety to be let in again. The law building has four floors: the basement/ground floor, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd floor. The library and auditoriums are on the 1st floor, the smaller seminar and clinic rooms are on the 2nd floor and the faculty offices and staff offices are on the 3rd floor. Around 4:00 I went to the classroom to make sure I could work the AV machine so I could show slides (diagrams of the court stuctures, both state and federal as well as tribal courts in MI) and it took over an hour of futzing around to get it going. By the time I actually had things set up it was just after 5 pm--the time when all access to the 3rd floor is locked and only people with "night access cards" can get in. I have such a card, since I teach at night, but I left it up in my office. So, I had to wander around until I found someone who could call public safety for me to let me in. That wasted another 20 minutes. So, when I finally got up to my office and packed up for my class (which is back on the 2nd floor) I made damned sure I had my "night access card" as well as my phone and notes and such. After class I then tried to get back to my office on the 3rd floor because, of course, I needed my car keys to get home--and found that my access card doesn't work. Argh! So, I had to call public safety AGAIN. More embarassing, it was the same guy. So Thurday, I stayed glued to my office seat until just before my class was set to start and took ALL by belongings to class on the assumption that I would get locked out of the 3rd floor again after class. Eventually I'll have to get my access card fixed by until then...I just will assume I don't have access.