Both my grandfathers died before I was born, and so I never really knew what it was like to have a male grandparent. People who know me must have noticed face turning wistful, everytime a grandfather was mentioned. Yet, when I encountered the two veterans who would teach my Constitutional Law course, i knew immediately, that this was exactly like what encounters with grandfathers would be like.
Let me describe a few moments from 'Consti' Class to demonstrate what i mean by this. Here are there two men, very well versed with their subject, working very hard to convey it to us, in a way that we, as children, can comprehend and understand. ( they're also possibly the first two teachers at law school, to treat us as people. as children, just out of school, who needed to be cared for and paid attention to, beyond the realm of the projects we could churn out and slides we would mug). Both there men us to learn not only the provisions of the constitution, but also a whole set of other values and ideas, which they are swarming with, and ow we need. So, while one man tells us little stories and annecdotes of his youth, highlighting the importance of integrity(for the first time in law school, integrity is not just about academic integrity while writing projects), honesty, courage and goodness, the other teaches us to eat healthy and work calm, emphasasing, that academics and projects are all secondary to health and well-being.
Both men, eager to instill us, values that they believe are tremendously important, at the same time making course work easier us, employ methods that they think are best for us. And along with the actual provisions of the constiution, I find myself learning and appreciating constitutional values.
What is remarkably amusing about these classes was how the two men interact with each other - exactly how I'd imagine my grandfathers would have interact with one another. They largely want to say the same things. Yet, each one repeats and elaborates on it, in his own way, even after it has been repeated by the other a number of times, in the very cute, charecteristic, hammering way of old people, in the process, wasting a whole lot of time. Both of them, wanting to say the same thing, in slightly different ways, depending on their independant estimation of our comprehensive capabilities, and maturity - one oversimplifying, and making us repeat things, so that each one of us would definitely get what was being taught, the other, filling his lectures with loads and loads of information, knowing that we could register and grasp it all.
A month of constitutional law, with these teachers has made me feel wonderful in a whole lot of ways. It has made me feel that there is someone who does care for the kind of person i become; that someone still looks at me as a child, giving me scope to make my mistakes, think in my own special way, be imaginative, and want to learn. As a child, whom they care for help help shape the personalities of, in their impressionable years.
My course on constitutional law, makes me feel loved.
