Realities of Law School Scholarships

I kept mine. I am grateful. I found out yesterday and it is still sinking in. But the relief that came with that news was tempered by information that a good friend of mine didn’t meet with the same success.  We started together, studied together, shared our concerns and our successes, and met each others’s families. We are both non-traditional students. Beyond that, our similarities end.  I’m a lifelong resident of the state I live in. The other person uprooted an entire family to get here. If one of us was in a better position to lose the scholarship, it was me. I still have a career here. But so it is. Any scholarship that is attached to a class rank is subject to being lost at the end of 1L year. It has been a humbling experience to say the least, and for my friend, perhaps life-altering. I need more time to decide how I feel about this situation, because hard work on its own, innate ability as reflected in GPA’s and LSAT scores on its own, or even the combination of the two is insufficient to insure success. As for the soft factors that were considered for these scholarships, both my friend and myself are the same people that we were before school started. Our life experiences, personality traits, and worthwhile goals and objectives have not changed. It is hard for me to say that either of us is less deserving of the scholarship today than we were last year at this time. Perhaps neither of us deserved it in the first place.  The optimist in me doesn’t want to believe the theory that the law school gives 1L’s money as a bribe to raise their ranking while expecting a certain percentage to fail. But no matter how you look at it, if you accept a scholarship that requires a certain GPA or class rank to retain that scholarship, you simply must consider what would happen to you if you lost it. For me, the risk would have been worth it anyway. For my friend, different decisions might have been made. Top half is not a given, no matter how accustomed you are to being at the top of the class. So….good luck to all those reading. I need some more time to adjust my attitude. For today, I am depressed and contemplative. I need to figure out what I want to do with this educational opportunity. I need to take full advantage of it this coming year, because a third year is not an automatic given. I’m not going to spend my year obsessing about grades, that is for sure. I’ll write again soon. Thank you to all my readers for over 7000 hits to this blog, I appreciate it.

Contracts, Grades, and a promise

I was sure I failed, confident my scholarship was on the line, and upset for days until I finally got to a point of acceptance. And in the end? I did fine. Pulled off a B, which is above the median. Unfortunately, one of the classes I thought I did well in ended up with a C+. But no matter how you look at it, my scholarship seems safe. I have one more grade outstanding and I don’t think it can pull me down far enough to significantly hurt me. But I have learned one lesson, and it is a mistake I will never make again. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO PREDICT LAW SCHOOL GRADES. It is an impossible task. There is no way to know. I have said that before, but didn’t really believe it. Now I know from first hand experience. Today I am the happiest woman on earth. Unfortunately the outstanding grade is with a Prof. who is well-known for her delayed grades so it could still be a long wait until I am 100% certain of my fate. I hope everyone is having a great summer. I’ll write again soon about that internship. To the 0L’s reading this, enjoy the time you have left.

Revelations

Two. First – law school students are not all morally competent people with high ideals and a genuine concern and respect for all people. They are also prone to holding stereotypical beliefs. Many of those students have never spent a day in poverty and some are honestly clueless as to the social and financial realities for many in this country. It is interesting and scary to think that many lawyers may not actually “get it”.  Examples, at the risk of jeopardizing my anonymity: It is not necessary for the courts to consider protecting the rights of public school students, because they all “do” have a choice – private school. Hmmm. Interesting. I should tell my sister about that. Never mind that she would need to work two jobs and sacrifice her quality of life substantially to afford it.  “Choices are not easy – that doesn’t mean they don’t exist”. Wow. Another example: Unconscionable clauses in employment applications don’t matter because…there are always other jobs. Really?  But the best: those poor people who are applying for those entry level jobs are stupid. Honestly stupid. Incapable of understanding the clauses BUT NOT entitled to relief because they should not have signed it if they didn’t know what it was. OH MY. It was all I could do to bite my tongue. This same group of people found it difficult  to understand that a lawyer giving client directions on how to succeed at tax evasion has committed a crime. I really am at a loss for words. THIS is why I am going to find it difficult to make a living being a lawyer. The people I care about don’t have money to pay.  But they aren’t stupid. And they do have rights. So….on to revelation 2.

Law school grades are very different than all prior grades. My grades are good. Better than the letter grades would lead me to believe. And there are people in my section who got D’s. Even D-. In one class fully half scored at a C or below. These are not C and D kind of people. I can’t even imagine it. The thing is, all of these people are bright, capable people. It doesn’t matter. The curve dictates that people will fall into the C and D range I guess. Supposedly if the entire class deserved A’s, they would get them. The median is not mandatory. But by my calculations, the median is consistently applied. Otherwise my classmates would not be receiving these grades. Of course if they all got B’s, mine would be meaningless. I feel bad for the people. I give them large amounts of credit for returning for the second semester. I would have found it difficult. So… I have a new perspective on grades. There but for the grace of God go I. 

 I’m really angry about the poverty/stupidity/undeserving of justice (government handouts?) issues. I know these issues exist, because I have personally experienced them. To be poor is not a reflection of intelligence, integrity, or any other thing. One would think that a competent law student would already know this and believe it. Perhaps not.  Think first, write later. I should remember that before I “open mouth, insert foot”. I hope my readers have a healthy, happy day.

The Curve

Two more grades came in – a B- in Civ Pro and an A- in Legal Writing and Research. The A- makes me happy, the B- less so. But the B- doesn’t count as a final grade so my final grades thus far are a B+ and an A- which doesn’t look so bad. But I am still disappointed. One more grade remains and I am praying for a B or higher. This is an interesting situation to be in at this point.  Other than being aware of a B- median, I have no idea where my class rank will be based on these grades. And yes, it matters. Unfortunately, it really does. I will feel much better when my last grade is in and I get a chance to figure out where I really stand.  Clearly, I need to do better this semester. If only I knew how to do that, I’d be in good shape.

Tomorrow brings Property and Constitutional Law. I think I’m going to like property. Constitutional Law less so. I still love Contracts even though my grade was less than stellar. I really think I can improve there, based simply on understanding the material better now that I have at least somewhat of a grasp on the subject. Civ Pro seems to be moving in a new direction this semester, and for that I am grateful. I found the first semester somewhat boring, and that could have impacted my grade. Legal Research and Writing is off to an interesting start. We got our first research assignment of the semester today and it seems exciting. For real. So that’s about it. For tonight, I am off to do some reading.  I hope my readers have a peaceful kind of day and can turn any lemons into lemonade. I have been dealt a couple this week.

Monday 1/5/09

Things I’m good at: reading, writing, and arithmetic, cross-stitch, bingo, pencil puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, driving, managing time, planning vacations, advocating for things that are important to me, cleaning house, organizing, packing, and procrastinating

Things I’m not good at: waiting, being patient, getting up in the morning, hanging around with brief periods of time on my hands, managing money, cleaning up other people’s messes, or waiting. Get the idea?

Things that totally suck: quitting smoking (hard, oh so hard, but I am trying – this is day 5) – waiting for grades, and being unable to use most of this day to accomplish anything that will actually matter.

So, I’m back. Home too early but I suppose I could get used to it. I wish I could just go to school and have one class right after the other. Get it done. I don’t like these brief breaks in between. 1-2 hours means nothing. 40 minutes is worse.  Eat? Yes. I know how to do that. Without the smoking, eating is on the rise. Other than that, life is good. I will spend the evening with my kids. I made a crock pot dinner, so there is no cooking in my immediate future.  I think we will watch a movie. Sometime within the next few weeks, evening movies will be sacrificed in the interest of studying. For tonight, the workload is minimal. I hope my readers have a lovely day and find time to do something interesting.