Columnists

My First Day In Law School

by T. SHER SINGH

It's been more than three decades now, but I remember the day as if it was yesterday.

It was my first day in Law School. I was excited and I was nervous.

And I was late for class.

I was trying to find my way to the First-Year Contracts class. The class-rooms were coded, and I had yet to figure out what the jumble of letters and digits meant.  

I knew it was going to be a full theatre - 150 of us. The lecturer was listed as a Prof. Gerald Fridman.

The materials described him as a world-renowned jurist - originally from England - with a dozen legal tomes and countless journal articles under his belt. I didn't want to be late.

But here I was, still struggling to find my way through the building. Finally, I made a bee-line for the office and was given some intelligible directions.

Breathless, I found the lecture theatre. Each of the two doors leading into it had glass windows. I peeked through one: the hall was packed. I could see the back of the professor bent over the lectern, drumming his fingers on the wood.

Yes, I WAS late. Very.

I could see dozens staring at me from the rows within. I had a fleeting vision of a scene from "Paper Chase" - my only visual bearing to date about what goes on inside a law school. I could see the Timothy Bottoms character being torn into shreds - coincidentally, in a First-Year Contracts class as well - by a crusty Prof. Kingsfield.

I shuddered, as I drove the image out of my mind, and timidly turned the door-knob, gently tugged at the door, and skulked in.

Once inside, I froze: the Professor was staring directly at me.

"There you are," is all he said ... and then the whole lecture theatre exploded into laughter.

I was too embarrassed to care about the details. And relieved when each of the students sitting at the desk directly in front of me slid a few inches to their right, creating a spot for me.

I put my knapsack on the floor below, between my legs. When I looked up, the professor was already at the blackboard, his back to us, chalking something on the slate. The laughing around me had stopped, and in perfect unison, all 150 of us had instantly poised ourselves to begin writing.

It was an hour-long lecture, delivered ... well, most professorially, in a heavy British accent, in a formal, no-nonsense style, with little fan-fare or any participation from the students.

It ended abruptly with: "Good, make sure you read your assignment of cases. All of them, please. See you on Thursday! Good Morning!" and he stepped off the podium, opened a door and disappeared down the hallway.    

We poured towards the two doors, milling around at the bottle-necks.

As I emerged into the hallway, the person next to me stopped me and asked:

"You know him? He's a friend of yours?"

"Who?" I asked.

""The professor."

"No," I replied. "Never seen him before. Why?"

He didn't look too convinced. But went on:

"Then you must be wondering why everyone burst out laughing when you walked in, eh?"

"Yeah-h-h ... what was all that about?" I asked.

"Strange," he said. "Once we are all seated at 10 o‘clock, Prof. Fridman walked in, went up to the lectern, opened his file, and then gradually surveyed the classroom. He pored over the papers in front of him - I guess they were the list of students - and he said: 'I don't see Mr. Singh here ... does anyone know where he is?' Of course, no one knew who Mr. Singh was ... so we just shrugged our shoulders, or shook our heads. He then just said: ‘Well, we'll give him a few more minutes'. And then he just stood there quietly, staring out of the window."  
       
He noticed my incredulous stare, and my sincere puzzlement ... and continued:

"The minutes ticked by. We just looked at each other, wondering who this mysterious Mr. Singh was, and trying to figure out why we were waiting for him. It all seemed odd, very odd indeed. And then, the door opened ... you walked in ... Prof. Fridman looked pleased. I think we just spontaneously burst into laughter ... in relief. And, I guess, because it was all so strange. You - a turbaned and bearded fellow walks in, the answer to the puzzle, and all's well with the world again!"

I just shook my head, amused ... and a bit troubled.

My ‘friend' introduced himself ... "David Little!" ... and we became good friends as a result.

It was months later, as I got to know Prof. Fridman a bit more, that I found out the answer to that strange morning.

Prof. Fridman was British and knew a lot about Sikhs. When he saw a Sikh name on the list of the freshmen that morning, he knew what to expect when he walked into the theatre. They were all strangers, almost 150 of them, and the only thing he seemed to know about any of them was that one of them was a Sikh.

So, when he couldn't see a turban in the sea of faces, he knew I was missing ... and instinctively decided to wait for me.

When I had joined Law School, I knew that there were no turbaned Sikh lawyers in the country. If all went well, I'd be the first. Actually, I hadn't even seen a single Sikh name in any of the provincial law lists across the country. So, I was more than a little apprehensive about having joined a very conservative profession, and lost a lot of sleep over it in the days leading up to the opening of school.

When I looked at the photos of 1L freshmen posted on the board of the common room on registration morning, I discovered that, but for one other, I was the only visible minority in my class. The other was a Korean-Canadian, seconded from the Canadian army for a stint in law school.

What am I getting into, I kept on asking myself, riddled with self-doubt.

And then, that morning, on my first day in Law School, as I walked out of Prof. Fridman's class, in one fell swoop, David dispelled many of my fears.

I walked out into the September sun, and savoured the warmth of life flush over me.  
 

February 22, 2011

read other articles in Columnists