Grrr. Sorry to hear that. Just keep in mind that how you do on law school tests doesn't have very much correlation to how you'll do in the practice of law, should you so choose to do so...
It will hopefully be counteracted (temporarily) by the fact that 3 out of my 4 classes this quarter are "mastery" classes meaning "no curve." If I don't get a decent grade in those I really am gonna drop out. Except my dad would kill me. I'm gonna secretly drop out. Yeah.
Can you get your dad to fly me to and from school? Parking sucks over there.
Oh these grades are so pointless. What do you call the person who graduates at the bottom of their class in law school? A lawyer. And that's all we are really here to be anyway.
Oh, shit. That sucks. Sorry to hear it. The more I read blogger reaction to their grades, the more I sort of hope mine just don't come back until this semester is finished. I am content with the new semester and don't want that feeling ruined by shitty grades.
i agree with kelly except that i'm not even a student yet! the more i read about unexpected grades, the more I want to vow never to check grades.
Sorry, E-Spat. One thing, though: in 20 years, it won't make a damn bit of difference how you did grade-wise last semester.
Sorry your grades were less than you expected. Please give yourself a treat, remember it is just a semester, take a deep breath, focus on expelling the cruds and move forward.
Take a deep breath, hold your head up high and anyone who tells you that they did fantastically well, tell them to go straight to hell. Works for me.
I like Beanie's idea...to hell with all of 'em!
Grades are not the measure of a person!
That being said *hug* and I hope you feel better soon.
I am in the same boat. I felt like I worked my ass off, so I have no idea how I could have done so badly. I am blaming it all on administrative error and am going out to get drunk.
P.S. -- Where do you get those marvelous pictures for the sidebar?
All over the place...mainly they are stolen from places that sell bumper stickers or fridge magnets and I just swipe it (god, I'm so going to hell for that). Yeah, it's not the grade I'm so much upset about, it's the fact that it's not a manifestation of the fact that I was SOOOO good all quarter and tried really hard to do the right things and did WORSE than last year when all I did in class was IM, blog, and play Bejeweled.
I was obsessed with my grades in law school and made myself (and my future wife) miserable over them. Everyone seemed that way.
I finished clerked and then started my own practice. No one has asked about my law school grade/rank in years.
And what do we call someone who finished in the bottom half of the class? Mostly it is "judge."
Hang in there and give yourself a break.
Listen, unless you want to be a law professor, law school grades are meaningless, as long as they are good enough to keep you enrolled. Given the areas of law you seem to be interested in, passing the bar is the essential thing. And, as the Dean of my law school said, "That's what bar review courses are for."
Some government agencies, mostly federal, are witless enough to think law school grades have some value as a predictor of something or other. Screw 'em. State agencies, in my experience, tend to be more rational. They want to know if you can do the job, not write an award-winning exam answer. Trust me on this, no trial level judge is going to care about your grade in Evidence. She is going to care about whether you can at least attempt to lay a foundation for that out-of-court statment, or manage not to fall down too often when you approach your witness to hand them an exhibit.
It's like Professor Kingsfield said - the purpose is to teach to you think like a lawyer. See
What the heck? I must have broken HaloScan or something -- the rest of the post was supposed to read. . .
seeing as most law professors can't do that, how are they supposed to know if you can.
There was a cute story from my Property exam at the end of 1st year, but I'm too lazy to type it in again.[-)
Test - it wouldn't let me post earlier this morning.
Ok, what I tried to say then: I increasingly think professors try very little when grading after the 1L year. They hate all grading, and mistakes/laziness don't hurt students as much after that first year, so why not just throw then down the stairs?
I've said it before and I will say it again: The only thing forced curves are good for is making intelligent people feel stupid. I think the schools that curve on a "B" have the right idea. If most students got a "B" or better in every class law school would be a little better on the ole' ego.
My school grades on a B curve, and the thing is, if you get B you feel stupid. If you get a B- you feel suicidal. All it does is move the expectations and disappointments onto a different level.
Your point is well taken. I guess from my point of view it would be easier to tell friends and family that you got a "B" instead of "C."
Sorry -- I will shut up now. I am not making things any better.
Boo!!!!!!!! E.Spat...I am sorry to hear of your grade woes! 
I say, MORE BEJEWELED!
I still love you.
We *all* still love you! Grades do suck. Sorry to hear that yours were as bad as mine -- oh, wait. Maybe yours weren't *that* bad! Take a lesson -- enjoy the semester and let the grades fall where they will!
Look--having just gotten a disappointing grade back myself, I know how little comfort this is going to offer you. But I'm going to say it anyway.
Law school is a sad, sad, pathetic excuse for an educational program. In no other form of graduate education in the US does *anyone* think that the appropriate means for teaching sophisticated reasoning is the large lecture class based on idiotically-edited primary materials, or that the appropriate means for measuring mastery is a single time-limited evaluation. It's a factory mass-production system designed solely to sort the students with the minimal degree of credibility required to satisfy the firms through the exertion of the most limited amount of effort by the professors.
I've felt this when I've done well and I've felt this on the occasion of both my disappointing grades. People who talk about the lack of relationship between grades and professional success above are right, but I think it's more to the point to keep i
...oops. cont.
to keep in mind the lack of relationship between grades and meaningful intellectual success. Your mind and your work habits are what you take with you for life, and they're what you should be most concerned about.
Same thing happened to me too and you know what the worst part of it all is? The fact that I feel like I've let ME down. It isn't about losing that job or clerkship.
So now that I've made you feel worse, the good thing is that it's *you* who can also pull yourself out of this hole. I mean, just feel depressed for a couple of days and then get your confidence back.
Hey, at least your school has a B curve. Mine has a B-. Super ick.
WTF?! Where do you all people go to school?! I hate you/me! We have a C+ curve. They've raised it (after threats, I'm sure) finally to a B- curve...effective my last stinkin' semester.
Ha! We're slightly above a B. I think the 50% GPA is a 3.1.
In other news, I made straight Bs last semester, damnit.
We have a B-curve but it really hasn't done me any good.
I say don't worry it too much. Or go out and get smashed to temporarily ease the pain. Alcohol solves all problems. Or creates them. I forget which.
When I said we have a "C" curve, I did not mean a literal 2.0 -- I was being hyperbolic. While I have not seen the ranking for SIU yet, the following is from the Spring 04 rankings at the University of Akron where I transferred from. It is my impression that SIU's ranking will be similar to Akron's.
The GPA at the 50% mark was 2.66. The GPA at the 25% mark was 3.1.
As you could imagine, two people could be applying for the same job with the same GPA, but the one at the school with the lower curve actually performed much better than the student from the school with the higher curve.
I pass on my sympathies... I may very well be in the same boat. I'm currently avoiding checking grades for fear of derailing my day, but my 1L year was fairly disappointing. I see all the other smart kids laughing, playing, interviewing... why am I not one of them? When did I get stupid?
Anyway, you shouldn't have to suffer alone. If it weren't for us buttressing the bottom of the curve, there would be no top of the curve for our peers to occupy. I think they should be *thanking* us for helping make them look good. Ingrates...
As you know, before I went back to law school, I worked as an engineer. I interviewed and hired several people while in that position.
Not ONCE did grades matter. Not a single damn time. And these people were quite literally brilliant! Yet their grades were all over the place, but if they could pass the interview, we didn't care at all.
Now I'm in law school and I think it's absolutely absurd how much emphasis people place on grades in law school. Good grades mean one thing, and one thing alone: that on the day of the exam, you were lucky. You remembered the right things. You read the professor's tea leaves correctly. The professor liked your analysis marginally more than the next nearly-equivalent answer. That's it, but sheesh, people think you've found the holy fucking grail if you get an A.
You're obviously a fantastic writer, you're funny as hell, and clearly a good communicator. That's going to serve you in a lot more stead than some arbitrary letter assigned by
(continued, got truncated)
a professor you'll never interact with again.
And, in the end, whatever job you end up with is going to be far more interested in both your strong work history and your ability to communicate.
I am one of the freaks who likes law school, probably because I had way more important things on my mind last year than school and it was a break from work, but I'd change it if I could, because I really despise how it makes smart and good people feel. I hate the focus on a single grade, the intimidation techniques used, the fact that practical clinics aren't required from day one, etc.
You'll do well in whatever you do. You *already have.* A few letters is just not going to change that.
(oops, that last continuation comment was obviously me, not anonymous)
Ditto what everyone said. Especially the part about "fuck grades". My first grade = B+. (The problem being that since that is the curve over at GW, god forbid...I'm AVERAGE!)
Hey,
How funny, I just wrote a post yesterday entitled: "To all the 1Ls...repeat after me: FUCK law school."
You'll do fine. One of my professors vehemently believes that subpar law students make the best lawyers.
I agree, fuck lawschool. If you work hard to get good grades, it probably means you will just end up working an a mega-firm slave ship when you graduate and die of heart failure before you're old enough to collect social security. So do yourself a favor and keep making marginal grades so that the grim reaper will pass you over for the guy who makes A's but doesn't have any friends.
totally the truth. I got screwed over this past term as a 2L. worse grades than 1L. wtf? three all similarly crappy but one reasonable one at the curve. and the one at the curve, the one I did best in was one I skipped like half the classes for. law school is crap. simple as that. i'm going to stop going to classes, maybe i'll get better grades?
I got As in classes I didn't pay attention in/missed last semester... and I did far worse in classes I tried in...
go figure.
Commenting by HaloScan
