Day Two

Tomorrow we have a Great American Cities program meeting from noon to one, where a UIUC alum talks about living and working in a particular city. This week is LA! How exciting... Plus, I managed to procure an appointment with the guy, so I have twenty minutes of unadulterated time to grill him about living & working in LA, and (most importantly) how to get there.

Today I have White Collar Crime (dummmm dad umm dum! can’t you hear the eerie music now?)... unfortunately, there’s a class in the room right before we have our class, so I couldn’t slip in at 8am and snag my spot. But, providing he passes the seating chart worund today, I should be all right.

Professor Beckett is kind of a larger fellow, wearing a seafoam button-down polo dress shirt with white vertical stripes and a dark green tie checkered with one-centimeter diamonds atop brown pants. He seems quite friendly, with white hair and a generally amicable expression. He’s sitting next to the podium at the front of the class clutching a coffee for dear life. When the class fell silent before starting, he said, “You don’t have to stop talking! You’ve still got five minutes; I owe you nothing.” Hope that attitude translates to the course. He opened by saying, “I hope to distract you from your e-mail or the games you’re engaged in.” Heh heh.

The upside is that there are a lot of repeat students, who voluntarily took this professor for a second time. The downside is that there are a lot of third-year students, who have much more experience studying and executing exams, which could provide a bit of an impediment to my ambitions to procure an A in the course. Hmm. Well, here’s hoping.

He passed out the seating chart! Hooray! I’m in the second row on the far right, the same spot I occupied for Evidence (which hopefully will have a fortuitous effect on my grade), and there’s no one to the left of me, so I have space to spread out the book and supplement during class. What’s interesting is, next to our name Professor Beckett had us put a little letter: “P,” “D” or “N.” We had to choose whether, when he called on us, we wanted to speak from the position of attorney for the prosecution, the defense, or whichever side he chose. Of course I chose the defense.