good: accepted to the staff of the Columbia STLR. Should be fun.
bad: criminal law exam. Will almost certainly be my worst grade of my first year barring a brutal curve, though property on Friday could give it a run for the money. Am going to need to do some serious post-mortem on this semester after it is done; nutshell is that I think I’ve learned a lot about myself and how to be more productive, but that it came too late to save the semester.
ugly: had dinner with Ross and Vicki at RUB. Delicious, and good company. Ugly only because Ross clearly hasn’t shaved since he left Britain. :)
It’s “designer stubble”.
Rob Brandford is the only person in OH that appears to regularly fully shave.
either rob shaves regularly or he hasn’t fully entered puberty yet, being such a young lad.
does this mean you are prepared to receive grades which are failing or just not up to the exceedingly high standards which you impose upon yourself?
Prepared to get a grade between the 20th and 50th percentile. Probably not below that. (For comparison, almost all of my grades last semester were roughly between the 50th and 80th percentile. These numbers are all approximate, but much more useful than saying the letter grades, which are impressive but meaningless without knowing the percentiles behind them.)
this seems to me, and i may be incorrect in my observations, that you are merely falling short of your own expectations and that it is no great disaster. the fortunate part about this is you can learn from it- which seems to be the whole point of education to me
Luis,
The good news about grades, at least in my experience (and Andy’s, too), is that they consistently rise after first year. Mine started pretty ugly (solidly bottom half), but now I have a shot at cracking the top 1/3 and graduating with honors. Not counting my chickens, but still. Bottom line: seminars, clinic, and not “checking out” did wonders for my GPA.
And while I still hate in-class, timed law school exams with a passion, in a way I understand the systemic pressures that compel them, and I’ve at least made my peace with the professors who give them.
Your grades will improve after the first year (but so will everyone else..). Unfortunately first year of law school is quite brutal in terms of Darwinism. I wouldn’t let it get you down. STLR and other non-graded efforts will help substantially. In the end, it all depends on what you want to do after you graduate. If you want to be in a top 2% firm, you need the grades. If you want to work for Red Hat or in the open source – legal realm, I think your other experiences are far more valuable than say someone else with a 5% percentile advantage ;-)