Perspective
Ok.....so I didn't get a score I'm proud of in CivPro, but:
1. As the kind and encouraging comment from last night noted, we have another midterm in that class next month. The professor will use the highest of the 2 midterm grades and drop the other.
2. The midterm grades are ONLY worth 10% of our final grade. So what I got (68%) and what I would have like to have gotten (70-85 range) would amount to a 1-2 point difference in my final grade for the class.
3. A couple of my study group members talked to the guy that is the editor of the school's law review. What he told them was that after you get out of school, NO ONE cares about your GPA. All they care about is if you passed the bar or not. Of course, having "law review" on your resume impresses people too, but in interviewing, GPA will not really matter.
4. I have a loving husband, wonderful kids, great family, beautiful home, fun car and this view to look at every day:
5. AND I AM doing well in law school. I am still better than average in every class, and probably in the top 20% overall. (Will do some calculations later today to determine that.) I will do as suggested and carefully go over this midterm and learn from it.
posted by BlondeLaw @ 7:46 AM
2 Comments:
You're right about GPA not mattering terribly after you get out of school—that's true in every field.
Class rank probably matters, though. I've been told that if you're in the top half of your class, you're almost certainly employable. Bottom half, not so much.
But as Jan told me yesterday, you can make law school and then practice into whatever you want them to be depending on the decisions you make. If you absolutely have to earn $500,000 a year, you just might, but you're going to suffer in pursuit of that goal. But if you want to help people, to make a positive contribution, to spread around your skills at thinking logically in the service of improving society, then there are tons of ways to do that.
Ultimately, you have to do what satisfies you; don't forget or sacrifice your reason for going to law school in the first place. Did you really do everything to get to this point just so you could have the top GPA?
Maybe you've already done this, but I find it helpful now and then to search the web for blogs by lawyers and other law students around the country. There's a whole lot of regret in members of the legal profession. People who have been practicing successfully for years are questioning their basic motivations and wondering why they're in law at all. Don't let that happen to you. Keep yourself centered.
Incidentally, having a high GPA isn't all it's cracked up to be from a security-and-confidence perspective — maybe I tied for second in torts and pulled down the high score in civil procedure, but my first reaction in both cases was, "Are you kidding? Of all these people who seem to study all day every day and remember all the things I forget in class, my essays represent the best we can do?" The Big Problem now, for me, at least in those two classes, is to make sure I at least repeat that performance on the finals. When I went into midterms, I had heard all the warnings about how getting a 65 is really good, so I worked hard and expected 70s. Now I have written two essays that received 90 points, so for me that bar has been raised 25 points (from 65 to 90). If I knew exactly what I did that got me such high scores, it wouldn't be so bad, but it's really more like, "Oh crap! How did I do that?! Now I have to do it again?!"
You are obviously a bright, above-average student who just got a small taste of disappointment. Look at this minor setback as a positive and use this energy to your benefit. Rather than dwelling on the negative, work harder. It will mean even more to you when you reach and surpass your goals.
"Anything in life worth having is worth working for!" - Andrew Carnegie
"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."--Philippians 4:13
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