Your fleet steams through a deceptively peaceful ocean. Despite the crisp sea breeze and clear blue sky, every sailor is on edge. Everyone knows the enemy could be just over the horizon. As the admiral of the fleet, you are unwavering in your hunt for the opponent. But you also know that your opponent is hunting you. Suddenly, you hear the thunder of naval artillery. You know it’s coming. A few seconds later, the artillery screams by and a huge tower of water rises from coordinates G-8, just off the starboard bow of your destroyer at G-7. You breathe a sigh of relief and prepare to return fire. This is “Battleship,” an epic game of plastic naval warfare.

I am going to shift gears now and discuss something that will sound utterly unrelated. But trust me: I will connect these two thoughts in a minute, weaving a complex and beautiful allegorical tapestry. I do this sometimes in conversation. But so far my wife has been able to resist the urge to bludgeon me to death with a desk lamp. She’s so sweet.

I turn now to Ancient Greece and the great philosopher Socrates. Socrates was known for asking difficult questions, thus forcing people to think and helping them to develop their reasoning. He used this teaching method on his students and the occasional unsuspecting Athenian passer-by. The method was highly effective. And highly annoying.

So annoying, in fact, that the Athenians decided the only solution was to force Socrates to commit suicide. And so, the great philosopher drained a cup of wine with a deadly dose of hemlock, but not before getting in one last lecture and posing for an 18th-century French painter.

Millennia later, Socrates’ teaching style is still used. Toddlers follow up every explanation with the question “Why?” Debaters use constant questioning to win verbal battles through attrition. But probably the most common use of the “Socratic Method” is in law schools. Here, professors randomly call on students to answer a series of questions. Some professors even force the students to stand while they answer so that they get used to standing in courtrooms and so that their classmates can have a clear view of their humiliation. So why do law professors believe so strongly in the Socratic Method? Presumably because it forces students to think for themselves and develop their own reasoning powers. But also because they are confident that the average law student has no idea where to find hemlock.

Though effective, this method is far from enjoyable for the students. In fact, it is downright terrifying. The moment that the professor walks in, the entire room goes deathly silent. He (forgive the male pronoun, but I didn’t want to go the rest of the essay saying “he/she,” “they,” or “it”; I had my fair share of terrifying female professors, but the two most terrifying professors I had happened to be men) . . . I’m sorry, what was I saying? That was a long parenthetical even for me. Oh, yes: the professor walks into the room and takes roll. He does so using his primary weapon: a seating chart. He looks back and forth between his chart and the students with a look on his face of what is either scorn or intestinal discomfort. Every student waits in fear for the opening words of the class, wondering if those words will be his or her name.

They usually aren’t. The professor will do a bit of lecturing first. But within a few minutes he will call out his first victim. Sometimes he does so unexpectedly, barking out someone’s name. But sometimes he consults his seating chart, like your opponent in “Battleship.” You’re not even sure he sees names and faces. He sees coordinates. And you can almost hear a beeping noise as the words “target acquired” flash across his vision. “Ms. Smith,” he says, and some poor girl in seat B-3 stands up. Hit.

Most of the rest of the room breathes a sigh of relief. However, Mr. Johnson in B-2 and Ms. Jones in B-4 are both frantically reviewing their notes, worried that the professor may attempt to sink the entire row.

Granted, instead of coordinates, the professor does use actual names. Most of my professors preferred to use last names. This created problems for me. You see, my last name sounded extremely similar to that of a classmate of mine. So every time one of us got called on, the other jolted in his seat. Occasionally, the other person would actually stand up. Thankfully, the professor would usually specify. But this was often too late: one or both of us had gone into cardiac arrest.

But that’s law school. Each student sits there and quietly prays that the professor doesn’t turn his artillery on their little coordinate. We watch helplessly as fellow students get sunk, one by one, like a flotilla of inner tubes against a single dreadnought.

But in the end, it supposedly helped us grow into professionals. It allegedly made us better lawyers, smarter people, keener thinkers. It may have given us perspective, insight, knowledge, and power.

It also gives me the shivers every time I walk by the board game aisle at Walmart.