Do You Want to Be a Lawyer?

In Contracts today, I had a true Paper Chase moment, with my professor doing his best Charles Kingsfield impersonation (the movie is an absolute must see for anyone who is thinking about going to law school). We finished about 5 minutes early and the professor opened the floor up to questions. One poor, unsuspecting student raised his hand on the other side of the room. To be perfectly honest, I did not hear exactly what he asked, but I deduced that it was some sort of simple fact- based question regarding the Uniform Commercial Code. It appeared to be a question that he could have easily answered for himself if he had just gone back and looked at the previous reading assignment again. The professor just stared at the student for about 30 seconds before beginning the following line of questioning... 

"Did you do the reading?"

"You say you did the reading, but your question was not of the type that someone who did the reading would have asked."

"Have you paid attention for the last 90 minutes?"

"You say you have been paying attention, but your question is not of the type that someone who has been paying attention would ask."

"Do you take this class seriously?"

"Do you want to be a lawyer?"

"Would you like to apologize to your fellow classmates for wasting the last 5 minutes of this class with you silly question, when we could have spent it discussing intelligent questions?"

I understood what the professor was trying to do. In reality, the student was probably wasting everybody's time with the question. But that does not make the experience any less mortifying (God knows how the guy must have been feeling). The girl sitting next to me commented that she would not dare ask a question for the rest of the semester. 

I personally would not go that far. But as a general rule I think it will be very prudent for the rest of the semester if I think before speaking.