Monday, October 17, 2005

Law School and Yom Tov

This year is a bad year for students. Unless they go to YU or some other bad... I mean Jewish, school, they are going to miss a whole bunch of days because the Yom Tovim (holidays) come out right in the middle of the week. Basically, Orthodox Jews are going to have to miss seven days of class this year.

Law school is particularly hard. I never went to a serious university (like some people), but law school is infinitely harder than anything I experienced in college. We have to do a lot of work preparing for class and then there's class itself, where we learn relevant facts/ideas for the exams. So if someone misses a class, he has to make up the class. But if he misses the class and the day before the class, he probably has to spend an hour or so preparing for class, and then another making up the class itself.

That's a huge disadvantage. It's not like school gives off for the next week. On top of the regular workload, he has to make up preparation and class time for missed classes. Where do people find time to do this? It's not like we have Shabbos to catch up.

The truth is schools try to be accommodating. Fordham tapes its classes. Many teachers will understand and try to help out. But there's only so much the school can do, short of closing down for those days, a la Cardozo (where Orthodox students are also disadvantaged because their counterparts have two days off to study).

Our religion puts us at a disadvantage in many ways. This is one of them. I guess to be frum we have to make sacrifices.

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