I first met Andrew Curran Wesleyan professor on my first day of university, at that point I wasn’t aware he was going to be my professor but we were both from nearby New Haven, Hartford and that was what began the conversation. I would later find out that he was my professor in law and it was thanks to his teaching that I was able to get through university with the success that I did. In my first couple of months at university there was a lot of complaint about the teaching methods if Andrew Curran but for me it was absolutely perfect and I got the absolute most out of it.
Motivational
The first thing that struck was the professor’s way of motivating people, very different with each individual person but equally as effective. For some people he would put his arm over their shoulder and encourage, others he would seek to challenge them to get them going and some he would speak terribly to in order to see some kind of positive retaliation from them. This worked more times than not and it was incredible that he was able to read someone’s character so quickly and then manipulate them to be better.
Role Play
During the lectures when Andrew Curran Wesleyan professor would get us all up on our feet and involved in a mock trial or a lawsuit or some other role play, many would complain that they weren’t learning. In spite of this however I still retain almost all of the information which I learned during those role plays, and precisely because of them. This was a creative way of teaching us what we needed to know and those lessons have stayed with me ever since.
Caring
For Andrew Curran Wesleyan students were never just a number to him, he was genuinely interested in seeing us all succeed and even now I get the odd email from him to see how I am getting on. This is something which many people lose out on with their university professors and there is often a complaint laid towards them that they do not care enough about their students but rather their own results. In the case of Andrew Curran this was simply not true and he cared greatly about how well we all did.
Relative
Law can often be boring when you are stuck with your heads in the books learning about the intricacies of a case but Mr. Curran was able to turn that situation into one which becomes infinitely more interesting because he would make it relative to you and your life. What I hadn’t realized at the time was that he wasn’t just being helpful here in making it relative, he was also bringing empathy out of us, a key ingredient for any law student.
The world needs far more professors like Andrew Curran.
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