It is pretty common practice for my professors to invite their students to lunch. In fact earlier this week I was thinking about it and I realized that of the eight professors I have had across both semesters, I have had lunch with six of them. Faculty lunches are a good opportunity to unwind with professors outside of the classroom and pick their brains about life, law school, and pretty much everything else.
The revelations that happen at professor lunches can span the spectrum. For instance I now know my property professor’s views on cyberlaw. I also know that my contracts professor owns the most adorable dog ever. The most surreal professor related lunch moment was probably going to Chang Zho (a chinese restaurant in Porter Square) with Alan Dershowitz, then watching “Reversal of Fortune” (a film about one of Professor Dershowitz’s cases) that weekend and realizing that even the Hollywood version of Professor Dershowitz takes his students to that restaurant. Unfortunately, we did not have the added company of a suspected murderer, but the year is young.
Last week a group of us got together with my Legislation and Regulations and Torts professors. We were set to have lunch in one of the classrooms, but had a slight problem: there was no food. Harvard catering was supposed to be leaving us sandwiches and cookies, but these goodies were nowhere to be found. My torts professor decided he would go on a quest to find our lost meal while we all hung out in the room. After about 20-30 minutes, we had still not heard back from the professor. Theories of his whereabouts were starting to pile up. The prevailing theory was that he was lost. My guess was that he had found our food but had absconded with it.
After waiting a bit more, our professor returned to the room slightly flustered carrying a large box. Apparently, our food had been delivered to the wrong room. It just so happened that a student organization was holding a meeting in that room and they had assumed that our food was some sort of gift from the heavens. Luckily my professor had been able to snag back our meals before too much damage had been done. I think we were all slightly tickled at the thought of our professor awkwardly grabbing back sandwiches from a bewildered group of students.
Once we all got settled the discussion was actually pretty insightful. We were able to talk with our professors about things such as the history of the Harvard curriculum/teaching style (much more interesting than it sounds), how much leeway they get in crafting their lesson plans, and we even got advice on what to look for in a summer job. Overall, sitting down to a meal with the professors is a great way to not only get some insider info on legal academia, but it’s also a good way of demystifying law school in general.
– Anit
