Here at Virginia Tech, I’m majoring in Political Science with a minor in Legal Studies. Both the major and the minor require, of course, that I take particular classes, sometimes a specific course and sometimes I can select a certain number of credit hours from a list of classes.
One requirement for Legal Studies is that I take 12 hours of classes — or four courses — from a list of 17 classes. It is from these from which I must choose:
AAEC 3314: Environmental Law
AAEC 3604: Agricultural Law
AAEC 4754: Real Estate Law
COMM 4024: Communications Law and Ethics
ECON 4894: Law and Economics
FIN 3055-6: Legal Environment of Business
FIN 3064: Legal Environment of Business for Accountants
FIN 4004: Wills, Trusts, and Estates
FIN 4014: Internet, Electronic and Online Law
FIN 4054: Poverty and Law
FIN 4064: Contemporary Law and the Individual
HD 4354: The Family, Law, and Public Policy
HIST 4224: Topics in Legal and Constitutional History
PHIL 4334: Jurisprudence
SOC 3414: Criminology
SOC 4404: Sociology of Law
UAP 4754: Legal Foundations of Planning
I’ve already taken two of these classes — I took Legal Environment of Business and Criminology over the summer, as they were the only two available. This semester, hypothetically my last here at Virginia Tech, I must therefore take two more. Thankfully, I managed to get into two of them — Agricultural Law and Real Estate Law. Now, I’m not real fired up about either of these — Agricultural Law because easily 2/3 of the class is a rehash of the exact same material from Legal Environment of Business (same textbook and everything) and Real Estate Law because the grading is based entirely on memorization. Helping nothing, both courses are back-to-back, taught by the same teacher, which is a little much. While beggars can’t be choosers, after attending each this afternoon, I decided that I should replace the Real Estate Law class with something else from the list of 17 classes. Or, rather, the 13 classes, since I’ve already taken 2 and I’m enrolled in 2 now.
This afternoon, I sat on Virginia Tech’s add/drop webpage, reloading repeatedly the list of available classes, hoping to snipe a spare seat in one of them. After a couple of hours, I got irritated by my complete lack of success, and decided to look into the matter.
It turns out that most of these classes simply aren’t offered. Here’s the list again. I’ve struck out the 4 classes that I’ve taken/am taking, along with all of the classes from which I’m supposed to be able to choose.
AAEC 3314: Environmental Law
AAEC 3604: Agricultural Law
AAEC 4754: Real Estate Law
COMM 4024: Communications Law and Ethics
ECON 4894: Law and Economics
FIN 3055-6: Legal Environment of Business
FIN 3064: Legal Environment of Business for Accountants
FIN 4004: Wills, Trusts, and Estates
FIN 4014: Internet, Electronic and Online Law
FIN 4054: Poverty and Law
FIN 4064: Contemporary Law and the Individual
HD 4354: The Family, Law, and Public Policy
HIST 4224: Topics in Legal and Constitutional History
PHIL 4334: Jurisprudence
SOC 3414: Criminology
SOC 4404: Sociology of Law
UAP 4754: Legal Foundations of Planning
Gosh. It turns out that those minoring in Legal Studies have just 6 classes from which to choose, not 17.
That’s assuming that they haven’t taken any of those classes. Helping nothing, two pairs of those classes are held at the same time, reducing the actual number of classes available to an individual to 4. In my case, there’s only 3 from which to choose — Communication Law and Ethics; Internet, Electronic, and Online Law; and The Family, Law, and Public Policy — though the latter two conflict with existing courses. That leaves one course, Communications Law and Ethics. Only it’s beyond full — the add/drop webpage lists the number of available spaces at -6.
Real Estate Law it is.