This class has made my life difficult. My decision to come to Harvard Law School was a difficult one. I had taught high school for three years and was enjoying it immensely. Sure, I complained jokingly about the kids from time to time (and still do), but overall, I had a tremendous time. The major source of my enjoyment came from the fact that the kids actually liked me. I was very different than any teacher than they had ever had and they welcomed the break and actually opened up to me in a personal way, especially by the end of the year. I think that most of them enjoyed talking to me after class, playing basketball with me in the gym after school, joking around with me, and sometimes even sharing secrets and feelings with me in confidence. I asked them for feedback letters (I didn’t call them memos, but the idea is the same) and responded to them both personally and by reforming my teaching. Some of the letters were very touching. I still have all of them. My favorite was from a "tough kid" who wrote me a note at the end of the year. He said that he thought I was cool because I actually listened to what he had to say and didn’t think I knew it all. He said that I was his friend, but not to tell anybody because it might "hurt his rep." I’m still touched whenever I read that letter.

Occasionally, I would spontaneously have a "Because You Asked" day, in which they would write questions on any subject and I would answer them, no matter how off-the-wall or personal they would get or how irrelevant they were to the subject of the course. (Well, I suppose there were certain bounds, but very limited ones.) Often I wouldn’t know the answer and we would spend time trying to figure out the answer together. I really think they enjoyed that. I can remember taking my speech team on road trips and talking the Principal into letting us stay in a hotel overnight, ostensibly to be "fresh for the competition the next morning," but really to give them a chance to relax at the mall or at the hotel pool or to see the sights of the city we were visiting or to take in a movie or play together. Granted, the lessons I tried to teach weren’t always straight out of the textbooks or things that I learned in education courses in college. Nor did my superiors always approve of them. However, I thought it my job to teach bigger lessons about life. I felt that the medium was the message, so the medium through which I taught far superceded, in my mind, the doctrine of the course. Funny enough, in the end, my students always performed above average on the doctrine too.

So most of my 750 words are gone and I have neither answered your question nor explained my opening sentence. Briefly, you have demonstrated to me that an extremely intelligent man, an undisputed expert in his field, a standout professor at the greatest law school in the nation, values my opinion and the opinion of others and even enjoys spending time with us; that he is still intensely curious about life. I wonder if you know how rare and how refreshing that is. You have shown me what can be accomplished by releasing the shackles of the status quo, by "breaking out of the box;" that the "usual way" of doing things is not always the best way. You have allowed us to work together without ground rules and see the uniqueness and innovation that can result from such an arrangement and the varied skills that we all possess and can use to the benefit of the whole. You have shown me that the best sources for legal learning are not necessarily those within the walls of a law school. You have shown me the value of transparency both in everyday life and in the justice-seeking process and the raw power in the telling of a story. Did you mean to teach me those lessons? Am I taking the right message out of the class? Was there a planned message at all or is Nesson the medium and the medium the message and therefore Nesson the message? I really don’t know.

The class has made my life difficult because it has reminded me what power a teacher yields: the power to turn off or to turn on. It reminds me what I gave up to come here. It makes me wonder if I should go back. I had finally stopped longing to be back in the classroom and now the call is back in increased measure. Maybe I should be mad at you for that. It was becoming easier to put that call behind as the calluses of more and more law school classes piled on. Now they’re gone again and what do I do now?

I guess the bottom line is I think you’re cool and that the lessons I learned from this class continue to challenge me. (But please don’t tell anyone – it would hurt my rep.)