I was never the best student in law school, but I did abysmally in my Contracts class. I did so poorly that I became a little unnerved and wondered if I was cut out to be an attorney. The material just never clicked in my head; all that business about consideration and offer and counteroffer struck me as dry and irrelevant to the kind of work I was interested in pursuing. But now that I’m actually writing and amending contracts as part of my job, I find that I kind of like the work. I suppose it appeals to the left side of my brain; contract drafting requires attention to detail and the careful parsing of words. I’m not sure that I would want to do contracts on a full-time basis, yet I feel compelled to apologize to Professor Matheson for not being more attentive in his Contracts class. I was young and foolish and did not appreciate the value of the wisdom you were attempting to impart to me.
I always liked Contracts, but the Offer and Consideration stuff doesn’t have much to do with what is actually involved when you write a contract. (Sometimes it comes into play when you are litigating, of course).
In that way Contracts always struck me as being a lot like Tax– interesting in the abstract, but not something I want to mess with much outside of class.
In the same way I was being too young and foolish to understand was was really meant in the periods we were being taught philosophy. at university. It seems to me a person has to live first, and then, afterwards, study such “wise” things. If it happens the other way round, every idea remains abstract: it is just words, words, words.
Mieke.