School School.

Last Monday we started a two day course entitled "Legal Highlights of Business in Europe". It was taught by Pr. David Sprecher a lawyer from Israel. He explained to us that we were going to cover a good chunk of the material that he normally covers in a 30 hour, 3 week course. Oh Goody.

The classe began at 9am monday morning and we adjourned at 4:30pm the same day. We were granted two fifteen-twenty minute break plus one hour for lunch. The remainder of the time was him sitting in a chair lecturing us on how to find governmental funding in Europe and on other legal issue. The content was very interesting but it was incredibly crammed into a very tight class session. He explained to us that on Monday we were receiving a lecture but on tuesday we were going to be given a test, a 2-hour long test.

His manner of teaching was completely the opposite of what you would find in the States. He must very blunt, rude and told you exactly what he was feeling. Although many students (well, ok everyone except me) hated him, I found him refreshing and I learned a lot. Periodically he would ask a question of the class and if a student's answer was completely off the wall, off topic or just completely wrong he would tell you that you were wrong very bluntly. He also made it very very clear that everyone had to speak in the course to receive 30$ of the grade, when one student did not speak during the class he approached the student after class and said "Too bad for you that you didn't speak in class".

While some might find this harsh I found it an excellent teaching method. The next day that student did speak in class. Although I don't think that all teachers should be as rude, arrogant and mean as this teacher periodically its good to be pushed down and belittled by a teacher. Oh and by the way he hated several of my answers and loved a few of the others.

The test on tuesday was quite interesting. We were given very little information about our task only that we would work in 4 teams of 5 in a 1 on 1 negotiation. One of the teams would be a Belgian company and the other a Czech company. The size of the company, product, purpose, etc. would not be told to us until just before the test started. It was our job to pick a country of incorporation, a country of manufacture, state where funding will come from (which grants or private sources) add the legal issues for choosing each country. Most of us didn't leave Campus that night until at least 8:30pm or 9pm(computer labs closed at 9pm).

So far that has been our most intense class but the other classes are starting to pile on the homework.