Law student problems

[sedvictacatoni]

My mental health law class is just the most stressful thing imaginable. The professor (who is also a judge) has openly said that she expects those of us who go on to practice in the area to be advocating for civil commitment of individuals, which is...precisely not what I'm taking the class to do. It's also really, really obvious, although she hasn't said it outright, that she doesn't envision anyone with a mental illness to be in the class (she tells us, to "humanize" people with mental illness, to think of the homeless people in Downtown Crossing). I spend half that class wanting to come out and say "we're in ur law schoolz, gettin your bar licensez" and the rest of it really not.

She has us do presentations called "mental health person of the week" and so far they have all been of high-profile criminals. She's been assigning them but she's acted like she's open to suggestions so I need to think of something else I can do and suggest it before she calls on me to do some shooting or other. Honestly I think it's really gross that she's presenting this as a discussion on mental health policy to a roomful of people who she doesn't expect have any prior knowledge. I mean, hard cases make bad law is pretty much a truism, and it's not like we have a problem with people underestimating how violent mentally ill people are. It's a really fucking upsetting way of teaching.

Other than that the semester is going well, at least. I've been getting out and talking to people (from my journal, mostly, who I'm not really close with, but at least I'm not sitting in my apartment all day), which makes me immediately and visibly saner, which makes me able to get out and talk to more people. It's an excellent cycle. And in eleven more weeks (well, plus exams, so I guess thirteen) I won't be a law student anymore, which is even better.

Comments

[meigui]

...that's. Utterly terrible. I'm sorry. Would you be comfortable talking to her outside of class about it, or maybe getting a third party, like your academic adviser or another faculty member you're close to, to mediate? Usually schools have some kind of anonymity protection for students that get this kind of issue with a professor...

Regarding examples--it's certainly true that the mentally ill are more likely to be the victims of crime than the perpetrators, but the only really high-profile victim I can think of off the top of my head is Genie, though, and that's probably a bad example because her mental disability was caused by the crime perpetrated upon her.

[sedvictacatoni]

Thanks! I'm sticking in because I actually want to do the civil commitment defense that she thinks none of us would be doing, but it's driving me up the wall and ranting on the internet kind of helps. I haven't had any personal issue with her yet (I mean, it's kind of personal to me, because I am one of these mysterious and frightening ~mentally ill~, but she doesn't know it) and I guess unless something like that happens I'd rather sit tight?

It helps that she's actually pretty okay about reasoned disagreement - I mean it doesn't stop her saying gross things, but she lets me talk and seems to take me reasonably seriously. It's just that I can disagree on legal issues but I really can't say lady, there are mentally ill people sitting right in front of you, please don't talk about us like a nebulous criminal mass, without coming out and not doing that at school is kind of a priority of mine. I do do the reading very faithfully for that class so that I can jump in when she says something terrible :D