Current Sentiments

My greatest fear is that I am inadequate.

Law school has a tendency to reduce your semester-long accomplishments and efforts to a mere three hour ordeal. It doesn't matter how much you work, how much you study, or how diligent you have devoted your time to the study of the black letter law. What truly matters is how you perform during that three hour span of time (and in some instances, 24 hour take home exams). Don't get me wrong - I am not saying that law school exams are completely blind.

However, if you admit a group of generally intelligent, hardworking, and disciplined individuals to every incoming law school class, chances are that most of your classmates will be working equally diligently towards these final exams during the end of the semester. At the same time, most of the students tend to be concentrated among a narrowly-tailored admissions criteria, which yields a fairly large group of nearly equally-qualified students, numerically. With the addition of the law school median -- where at least 50% of the class has to get a B and above, or a B and below -- it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate yourself among your classmates. This differentiation is extremely important because for the most part, your GPA determines whether or not you are even able to secure an interview at well-renowned law firms in the area, and across the region.

Since as a class, we are all presented with the same materials and lectures, it is generally difficult to deviate too far from the normal educational understanding of the subject matter. However, many, if not all students, gravitate towards the use of study aids - most of which generated from a small group of legal publishers. Most of these study aids will have roughly the same information. As such, difficulty arises when one tries to gain a competitive edge among a group of similar-minded, driven students. Of course, there are those who were admitted with far-more qualified numbers. True to their nature, some of these students will go on to perform as they always have in undergraduate. At the same time, others will fall behind. Regardless of the fact, law school is a fiercely competitive environment, even if the surface appears to be peachy, where everyone is friendly with one another.

Unlike undergrad, where students receive a steady stream of feedback from professors, the fate of your law school academic career rests with the final exam only. Therefore, if you fail to perform up to expectations (or get caught up in the median), it takes a relatively long period of time before you are granted an opportunity to prove the extent of the knowledge you have attained during the course of the semester. While that is happening, you get to wallow in self pity; you wonder constantly what it was that you could have done to change the fate of those mediocre grades that have come to characterize your experience as a first year law student. You test out different techniques, rework your schedule, and ultimately play a novice chemist, whereby you constantly mix and match those variables in your life in order to attain the perfect combination of academics and life in general. At the same time, you hope for feedback from that one class that gives you feedback, only for that feedback to disappoint you.

In other words, the measure of your self-worth in law school, is wholly dependent on that single letter grade for each of the ten core classes that most law schools provide during the first year. For many (myself included), that letter grade stays with you for the duration of your time in law school, especially during the first year. The grade comes to define you - acknowledging the fact that you either stand tall and confident among your classmates, or ashamed and timid compared to them. Either way, you find that most students avoid speaking about grades specifically (as recommended by most of the law school administration) for fear of discovering that another student has performed better than you.

I have been living in this environment for the last seven months, and I feel that I have been trapped in this cycle for just as long. From day one, I have tried to work as hard as I could -I studied diligently everyday, I neglected much social activity, not to mention I have passed on income from working in general, in pursuit of this elusive J.D. degree. And yet, it seems as though I have been running on a treadmill this whole time - the increased effort that I exert on the treadmill is not reflected in the distance that I cover. In essence, no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to break from the pack. The harder I run, the more elusive solid academic performance seems to be. I can't seem to catch a break, and ultimately, this entire process is discouraging and has made me feel wholly inadequate.

This feeling does not seem poised to go away anytime soon. I have two months before the next set of exams - the next time that I will be able to redefine my self worth. During that time, I will struggle to redefine my study habits, not to mention study to understand and process the legal doctrine that is crammed into my head at an alarming rate day in and day out.

Moreover, throughout this ordeal, I can't help but to re-evaluate my priorities, and the costs and benefits associated with three additional years of post-graduate, professional schooling. Law school is not cheap, and with debt and expenditures approaching six digits, it is difficult to be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I have no guarantees whether or not I will be able to obtain a law firm job for my second summer, given my mediocre performance during the first semester, not to mention my less than satisfying performance so far this semester (it's funny: this entire entry was motivated by a .5 point discrepancy - the sole indicator of my performance thus far in the semester. This just goes to show the hunger that law school has created in me to seek validation for my life choices).

Meanwhile, I can only hope to continue rediscovering new techniques in hopes of out-working and out-performing some of my classmates, and perhaps finally attain that validation -- the validation to indicate that perhaps there will be fruit to be reaped at the end of this investment -- that I so desperately crave. I don't want my life to revolve around that single letter grade, but it has resorted to that through no choice of my own. I need to break this perpetual cycle.