Property at BU

BU Law is famous!

When someone told me that BU Law had made Above The Law today, I immediately thought of this weekend's events, which may or may not lead to Michael Cera's indictment for breaking and entering.

Happily, it's not. The Post is about the C Section's property professor last year, who, by all accounts, was like last year's teaser trailer for Sarah Palin. I can't count how many times I ran into a friend from Section C who was fuming about her, whether it be her class, her emails, or the fact that she said her practice exam was wrong and they all studied the wrong way an hour before the exam.

So yes, it's a legit post.

Those of us in Section B had Ryckman, the institution, who, in strict Socratic fashion, would call on only one unlucky victim person per class, and subject that unfortunate student to an hour of thorough grilling.

Since anybody, at any time, could be that person, the afternoons before class were spent feverishly reading, re-reading and re-re-reading the cases, hoping vainly to understand just what in the world the Rule in Shelley's case was.

And you've never seen more tension that the time period between when Ryckman walked in and made his selection. Everybody in the room, I remember, looked like they were sitting at the AIDS clinic, having been called down to retrieve the results of your test in person.

One by one the victims fell, and the pool of remaining sitting ducks diminished. This, of course, meant the tension increased. It would almost have been a relief to be called on, to get it over with, and to stop feeling like you were on death row, waiting for that inevitable walk down the green mile.

For a year I wallowed in anxiety, forsaking* Thursday nights, my favorite night of the week, in the interest of attempting to at least be able to speak when I was on call. I must have aged fifteen years last year, and now await an even more imminent death.

AND I WAS NEVER CALLED ON. The year came and went and I was one of about a dozen who were spared. All the anxiety, all the hours spent preparing, they were all for naught. Sure, I learned my property, but my God. I felt gypped. I felt bamboozled. I felt like I got cheated out of the opportunity to make a stammering ass of myself in front of the entire class.

That last statement is only mildly facetious. I feel like being Ryckmaned is a rite of passage here at BU, and I was unfortunate enough not to be a part of that. It's like being the one guy at boot camp who doesn't get yelled at, at the frat house who doesn't get hazed, or at the shady group who does not get initiated. I'm not asking to be kicked just for, um, kicks. But there's a reason groups do these activities, to create a bond, a common experience from which everyone can draw on to remember what makes them a group in the first place.

*this may be a gross overstatement of terms