Promised post #1: gunners

Okay, I'm suffering from that feeling that I haven't posted in long enough that what I post now must be GOOD! BRILLIANT, even! Insightful, witty, thoughtful, evocative!!!!, and folks, feeling such pressure is not conducive actually to producing such a post. So I'm going to spew a few thoughts on the screen and call it a day. You have been warned.

So, the topic of gunners seemed to raise some interest. Here's my take:

A gunner is one of those students - the ones who ALWAYS have their hand in the air, ALWAYS have something to say, and LOVE to hear themselves talk. I was wondering where the term gunner comes from, exactly, and how it took on this meaning. The OED doesn't include the slang use of gunner (shocking, I know), so I can't tell you when it entered the lexicon in this form. The Urban Dictionary is no help on etymology, and lifts its definition pretty directly from Wikipedia, which doesn't give etymology either. What's amusing, though, is that if you plug "definition of gunner" into Google, the first thing that comes up is "a frequent shooter," which is perfect, and also apparently comes from basketball. (Maybe everyone out there knows this already? Excuse my ignorance of sports terminology if you do!)

So, a gunner is someone who is always shooting off at the mouth. I find it interesting that some people out there (how's that for a concrete reference? this is my sense from reading law student blogs, but I have no specific link, sorry) seem to consider almost anyone who ever opens their mouth in class or asks a question to be a gunner. (Apparently asking questions in the last 5 minutes of class is really bad form.) Under such a reading, Hermione Grainger would be a gunner (and I suspect the Slytherins do all see her as such). (I love using Harry Potter to talk about real life.) People on this end of the spectrum advise basically ignoring anything that your classmates say, as they don't know any more than you do, and you're not paying to learn from them, but from the prof.

More commonly, however, people do make distinctions between valuable contributions from other students, and gunners. (For one thing, I'd answer the objection at the end of the last paragraph by saying that maybe the prof is actually using the student to make hir point, and therefore you should in fact pay attention. The idea that you can ignore anything your classmates say implies that nothing profs do has anything to do with what a student answers.)

There are lots of discussions/complaints about gunners out there on law student blogs (and probably elsewhere). My own view of gunners, though, is that it's not about whether you answer frequently or not - it's how you answer.

In short, if your answer includes the words "clearly," "obviously," or any variation on those words, or any of their synonyms - you are a gunner.

This doesn't even mean that you have to be wrong to be a gunner - you might be right.

But for me, what makes an answer intolerable is the absolute blind confidence that of COURSE there is one side to the question and OF COURSE you know it and OF COURSE anyone could see it, and that if somone doesn't see it, that person is clearly an idiot.

This isn't to say that there aren't other ways that a student can answer annoyingly. (Trying to put the facts of a case "in your own words" and in the process paraphrasing them into something completely wrong is not fun to hear.) It's also not to say that hemming and hawing and undermining your answer and being tentative is necessarily better (and yes, I hate to say it, but it's mostly female students I've seen doing this, so far). But I don't think those problems are the sign of the gunner.

So for me, the key to being a gunner is arrogance.

Now, my experience may not be the same as other students'. First, we've had a whole three weeks of school; we may all still be enthusiastic enough and newbie enough that I haven't seen true gunnerism yet. Second, the idea of the gunner as someone who dominates the discussion and takes the class off in completely irrelevant directions doesn't seem to fly here, since my profs seem consciously to avoid calling on the same people all the time, and have no qualms at all about saying, "That's really interesting, but it's not relevant to this point, so ask me about it after class." So maybe in other contexts, other kinds of gunners arise.

I may also be lucky, because I haven't seen very many gunners yet - again, because my profs seem pretty good at shutting them down. And while my classmates are all extremely smart and probably pretty competitive, the atmosphere here is pretty laid back and collegial. So maybe lack of a strongly competitive institutional culture helps reduce the frequency of gunnerism.

The final thing I wanted to mention was that I am honestly surprised that MA/PhD programs do not use the term gunner. Because arrogance? Such programs possess it in spades. I have been in grad classes with plenty of people who dominated discussion, who loved to hear themselves talk, who name-dropped incessantly, and basically did everything they could to declare LOOK AT MEEEEEE I'M SMART!!!!!! (Haven't we ALL been in class with gunners?) It may be that the specific grading contexts of med school and law school are necessary, not so much to produce the gunner, but to produce such a visceral reaction against them. I'm assuming here that med school, like law school, grades on a curve, so the quality of the work your classmates produce is directly related to the grades that you achieve. Grad school doesn't do that. Yes, it's irritating if the class blowhard does better than you in a given class. But you know that your grade is not in any way determined by what the class blowhard gets. So perhaps the grading curve has helped focus and articulate law/med students' rage against their annoying classmates in the form of labeling them a gunner? And conversely, perhaps those who gun are compelled to do so by their need to set themselves apart from their peers?

On that note, I think I need a cookie to fortify my torts reading. Thank god my hipster coffeeshop has stopped playing smooth jazz.

Comments

[Dr. Crazy]

It strikes me that the term "gunner" is a really masculine sort of term... which may explain why it's not used in a humanities context at any rate. Also, as much as (humanities) PhD programs are combative and cut-throat, I don't think that the culture is one where this is overtly celebrated, which I think is the case in law school/med school. The lip service in English much of the time is that people chose grad school in part because they were opting out of the rat race (though of course, it's just a different set of rats, and the race is in circles instead of to the top or something :) )

That said? There were TOTALLY gunners in my grad program. We just called them a**holes :)

[ppb]

We have gunners in seminary. They exist in the large classes--the entry level surveys. Some of us, less enlightened souls that we are, have created a lovely game called gunner bingo. Gunner bingo is a lot of fun.
(it's not actually bingo, but kind of like it.)

[Pilgrim/Heretic]

Illustration, from a high school context: Reese Witherspoon's character in the movie "Election." :)

[Sisyphus]

Ditto on the Witherspoon reference.

And mmm! cookies! Much better than gunners.

How's the material itself coming along? Is it making sense? Boring as all hell? Intimidating?

[helenesch]

From talking with my ex about this when he was in law school, and from what my sister said about vet school, I got the impression that "gunners" cared a lot about their grades, and that they specifically wanted to please the teacher so that they could be acknowledged as smart and worthy of the highest possible grade.

In grad school (in the humanities--philosophy, for me), although there certainly were many arrogant students who wanted to impress everyone, including their profs, the nature of the "competition" was quite a bit different.

[Susan]

Thank you for making sure I learned something today.

Do you ever feel weird watching these dynamics, with one hat being a teacher hat and the other the student? (It's totally a teacher comment to see how a prof uses students to make a point.) I'm always interested to see how other teachers do things! It sounds as if your profs are doing a good job of controlling things.

Oh, and go cookies!

[New Kid on the Hallway]

helenesch - the irony of the gunners trying to be deemed worthy of the highest possible grade is that grades are (in most classes) based only on the exams, and the exams are graded blind! Of course, I can see the gunnerism as a psychological mechanism - to reassure/convince yourself you must be worthy, even when participation has no effect on the grade at all. (Lore has it that most gunners tend to shut up a bit after grades come out.)

Sisyphus - I think the material is coming along fine. I feel like I understand it (sure, there's plenty of stuff the profs bring up in class that I didn't know, but then, that's why they're the profs!); I don't seem to have a problem making sense of it (whether this will translate to good grades, who knows, but I feel pretty comfortable). It is still a slog to get through the reading, because I'm still getting used to looking for what we're supposed to look for in reading cases, and because I'm being uberthorough and taking notes on the reading (which I never did in undergrad or grad school! I took notes for *papers*, but not for everyday garden class reading. But then, in grad school I wasn't going to get cold-called, either, and a lot of the time I'd written a book review of whatever we'd read, so that gave me plenty to go on).

Is it boring as all hell... no, it's not bad. A lot of the cases are really amusing to read (litigants are frequently really dumb, and judges have wacky opinions sometimes). Civil Procedure is kind of the exception, since it's not about content but about procedure (duh), that is, how you actually file a complaint, etc., and so the cases are about whether someone's complaint can get thrown out based on Federal Rule of Civil Procedure X, rather than about people doing crazy things to each other. I've been really enjoying property, but that's because it starts out more conceptual (what IS property? how do you make something property?) before settling down into concrete rules and stuff.

I will say that I've really enjoyed the little bit of legal writing we've done so far that actually starts to look like stuff lawyers have to do, so that's cool. (I have a post about legal writing brewing, too.)

ppb - yes, gunner bingo!! I've seen people talk about this. So far, not enough gunners to get a good game going, but I'll keep my eye out. (I think it would be a great drinking game, if drinking in the middle of class weren't perhaps a bad idea.)

And Crazy, yeah, I agree that gunner is a masculine term, and the stereotypical gunner, I'd say, is male, even though I'm sure we've ALL known the women students who wouldn't shut up. (I've probably been that student...) The gender element of law school is kind of weird - I'll have to say more about this, too, I think...

[GoodEnoughWoman]

I'm making a confession. As an undergrad, I was a gunner. But as a reformed gunner, I would like to offer an alternative reason (excuse) for my frequent shooting off at the mouth. First, I'll concede that I probably wanted to sound smart. But really, I think I was just lost in the moment. I'd listen to the teacher, become engaged in the lecture or discussion, and kind of forget about the rest of the class.

But then I got called out. After graduation, a fellow student from my abnormal psych class saw me at a bar, and she said, "You're the girl from class who is ALWAYS raising your hand and talking. Oh my God, we all HATED you."

Twenty years later, I now have students of my own, and, yes, I have gunners. But some of them are smart and innocent. Some of them are so engaged that they have little restraint. Others lack social skills in general.

As for me, I was shocked at my classmate's blunt confession. And I was forever reformed. Mostly.

[Seeking Solace]

I remember gunners in law school. But we called them ass-kissers! But, that was 15 years ago!!!

There are some ways you can use a gunner mentality to your advantage. I had a first year professor who would seek volunteers. If she didn't get any takers, she would start going down the row until she found someone who could give an intelligent answer. Figuring that she would get tired of calling on me, I would volunteer all the time. By mind semester, she got tired of me. The result was that I could coast the rest of the semester!

Yep, brings back memories! :)

[notorious Ph.D]

Posts like this make me wonder if I was a gunner in grad school. I mean, most of the time, I was all nice and collegial. But there were at least two of my colleagues who brought out the competitive raging bitch in me. ::sigh::

[Thoroughly Educated]

What I really want to know about the difference between grad school and law school: in law school, does everybody wear the same kind of glasses??

Looking forward to the legal writing post!

[unbalanced reaction]

Now perhaps Dr. Crazy was referring only to grad programs, but in my experience (back in undergrad) the ONLY gunners were the humanities types. I hate hate hated my humanities classes that had participation components because that only encouraged the gunners. In my science classes? Never had any gunners.

But perhaps mine was an exceptional case.

[Paris]

No luck unbalanced, my freshman biology class was the worst for gunners in my undergraduate career. To be fair, the bio program was extremely popular and the course was a weeder.

The big lecture hall context brings out the gunners. Remember New Kid, you only need five to make up a bingo card!

(ok, I'm living vicariously. My big lecture class is too lumpen to warrent turkey bingo.)

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Yeah, I think the freshman bio course is notorious for gunners. I think where it's similar to law school, too, is you have all the people who are convinced they're going to to med school and so they have to be THE BEST!!!, in the same way law students are all used to being THE BEST!!!!, and want to come out on top.

Which isn't to say that humanities courses can't present their own brand of hell, especially if poorly done (or if one just isn't into that kind of discussion).