Cannot Study Law with My Weaknesses

Is learning through discovery more effective than learning through repetition? I've been asking myself this question one way or another ever since I got back to law school. I'm asking because it's a challenge to do the bidding of your teachers if you don't have the confidence that they know best how to make you learn.

This afternoon at Special Penal Law class we delivered a report on PD 1829. It was amateurish work especially the part when we groped for legal arguments to neutralize legal questions coming our way.

Frankly, I don't approve of the assignment and its effectiveness as a teaching tool. I have to ask. Where is the creative tension in doing something you don't care about? Where is the cognitive dissonance that will make you learn anything significant?

I'm not writing about this incident to complain. It is useless. What I want to accomplish here is to reframe the problem. For seven more semesters, we will, with a great deal of certainty, encounter situations like this. It shouldn't come as a surprise.

The real problem should be: How can we give our best performance and overcome our shortcomings?

Hmm. This incident is a good excuse to activate Cannot Study Law with My Weaknesses. (Read the prologue, Putting Strengths to Work.) Now, I can start studying law seriously.