I hate not being able to speak in class. OK, I guess I am able to speak in class, insofar as I have a mouth, and a larynx, and I can put together (usually) full sentences. What I mean to say is that I hate not being well versed enough in a subject to join in on a discussion in class when everyone else seems so passionate about it.

So far in law school, I’ve taken mostly black letter law and clinical courses, where I just have to learn a bunch of rules and work on practical legal assignments, respectively. This year, I decided to take the “easy route” and register in some seminar courses with very little students (that is, a small amount of students, not strangely diminutive pupils [that is, people who go to school, not the black middle parts of your eyes because that would be weird, not to mention just plain crazy talk at this point]) and with a whole lot of dialogue.

It’s not that I’m not used to talking to other students and professors. In my undergrad, I majored in history and English literature and I felt comfortable talking about shit that went down during the Great Depression or the underlying tropes in African novels. These days, I’ve been thrown in with people who use buzzwords like “neo-liberalism” and “Keynesian” on an hourly basis, people who know the Canadian parliamentary system inside and out and know what the national deficit was in the 1990s. On a surface level, I understand what they’re saying. But when it comes to passion and just sheer motivation to understand the theory, they have me beat. Further, I feel that some of my more pragmatic views on things like poverty, feminism, and racism in the law and general society will not be well received in a class of philosophical, knee-jerk liberals.

I try to ask questions, throw in seemingly obvious points, and generally keep my mouth shut. But I know I have more to contribute than this. I hate feeling silenced. Especially when everyone I know tells me I have an (unusually) big mouth.