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Chapter Thirty-Two
Back to School
AUGUST 1996 – JUNE 2010
In which our author learns, among other things, how Professor Farnsworth might have felt.
Professing Ignorance
One day, late in August 1996, wearing my most lawyerly suit, I left Squire’s Park Avenue office to take the Lexington Avenue line to Bor- ough Hall in Brooklyn; I was going back to school.
Waiting for my 4:00 class, my first class in twenty-seven years, I was standing in the hall, having just ascended two long flights of stairs (the elevators were packed), with briefcase, lecture notes, supplementary materials, casebook, the requisite box of markers, blank seating chart, and roster. I was breathing heavily. At first, I attributed the pounding in my chest to the encumbered climb, but, as I hung back from Room 304 and watched crowds of fairly scruffy students enter or emerge from stairwells and lecture rooms, heading for their next class or for parts unknown, I realized that it wasn’t merely that I was out of shape. Not- withstanding more than twenty-seven years in practice and countless lectures in front of groups of seasoned attorneys, I was nervous about my first appearance in front of students.
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